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See pp. 161—165. 



REPUTED PENANCE OF HENRIETTA MARIA, QUEEN OF CHARLES I., AT TYBURN. 

From a German print in the Crowle Pennant, I 
in the British Museum. 



TO THE READER. 



The Art of Writing History has, ot late years, received many 
aids and accessions from the most accredited sources of truth, 
which, as Horace Walpole has remarked, is " the essence of History." 
The value of these gains has, however, been variously estimated. 
" We think," says a popular writer, " the existing generation is not 
favourable to the production of durable impartial history. Ours is an 
age of discovery ; we do not now mean scientific discovery. For a 
century or so the habit had prevailed of receiving implicitly the tra- 
ditions and records of past times, assuming them to have been sub- 
stantiated at the date of their publication. This style of constructing 
history consisted merely in breaking up and rearranging stereotype 
blocks. Recently, the worthlessness of such a mode of proceeding has 
become apparent, and now the opposite error has come strongly into 
vogue — that of leaping back to contemporaneous neglected documents, 
and, on their evidence, reversing the settled deliberate verdict of past 
centuries. Thus, Cromwell and Mary of Scotland, and George of 
England (we don't mean him of the Dragon) get new characters ; — nay, 
to such an extent is this carried, that, following the example of a learned 
prelate, we have a worthy man presenting us with ' historic doubts ' 
relative to the existence of Shakspeare — a writer of plays ; and this style 
of thing is creeping into science." 

It is not proposed in the present volume to treat of these historic 
studies in all their bearings ; our object in quoting the above passage be- 
ing to show the extent and variety which they have assumed. 

In France and Germany these inquiries have long occupied public 
attention very largely, and have had a corresponding influence upon 
historical works published contemporaneously in England A vigorous 
offshoot of this widely-extended object we have now had in this country 
for nineteen years, in the valuable Notes and Queries, a " Medium of 
Intercommunication" which has much of the historic element in its pages. 

Within the present year has appeared a volume, displaying much 

,Q arning and research, by Dr. Octave Delepierre, entitled Historical 

ifficulties and Contested Events, in the introduction to which, the author 

ints out " a great many so-called historical facts, which are perfectly 

liliar even to the ignorant, and yet which never happened." The 



i 



vi TO THE READER. 



Historic Difficulties comprise twelve histories, ranging from the ancie 
world, b. c. 306, to Galileo Galilei, 1620. 

We had long observed the public taste for this species of corre 
tive reading, extended to modern times, and inquiries of a more popul 
and practical character than those of the antique world. In 1841 v 
published a volume of Popular Errors Explained and Illustrated, whic 
though successful, did not attain an extraordinary sale. Readers we 
not then ready for such inquiries; but, in 1858, we reproduced th 
work m an entirely new form; taking Sir Thomas Browne's Fuh, 
Errors as the text book for the older portion of the work, in gre 
part re-written. Of this improved edition of Popular Errors seve 
thousand copies have been sold, and the Work is kept in print. 

The present volume— Historic Ninepins— an eccentric title, | 
the way— seeks to supply the requirements of a large class of reade' » 
and m such plain words " that he may run who readeth." The worl^ |I 
divided into eleven sections, which collectively contain more than th' 
hundred articles. We have termed it " A Book for Old and Youn,^ |& 
inasmuch as, besides the Wonders of Classic Fable and Popular Ficti > \ 
those m our Early History extend beyond the limits of mere abstrar 
such are the Stories of English Life, which are the delight of our e 
years— indeed, of all ages. To the leading events of our hist. f 
proportionate attention is paid, in such a manner, as by their concc 
tration, to point with warmth and quickness upon the reader's coi 
prehension. j 

Meanwhile, a contemporaneous interest attaches to the Histok , 
Ninepins, for its " Historico- Political Information," by way of anm a 
tation ; and here we have specially to acknowledge our obligation t 
"the Fourth Estate," which affords a faithful and eloquent reflex of " th 1 
very age and body of the time." The annexed Table of Contents and- 
copious Index will, however, best bespeak the variety as well as general 
character of the work, which has been prepared with due regard to ac- 
credited authorities, as well as attractiveness of narration. 

In such an assemblage of Names, Dates, and Facts, as the present 
volume contains, it would be presumptuous to promise freedom from 
error ; but the reader is assured that no pains have been spared to insure' 
accuracy. 

December, 1868. 



HISTORIC 
NINEPINS 



A BOOK OF CURIOSITIES, WHERE OLD AND YOUNG 
MAY READ STRANGE MATTERS: 



CONTAINING 



CHARACTERS AND CHRONICLES. 
DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES. 
FICTIONS AND FABULOUS HISTORIES. 
IFS AND INCREDIBILIA. 
LEGENDARY STORIES. 

MARVELS AND MISREPRESENTATIONS. 
MYTHS AND MYTHOLOGIES. 
PARALLELS AND PERIODS. 



POPULAR ERRORS. 
PROPHECIES AND GUESSES. 
PREHISTORIC TIMES. 
RECKONINGS AND REFUTATIONS. 
TALES AND TRADITIONS. 
UNIVERSAL HISTORY: READINGS, WITH 
NEW LIGHTS. 



* 



By JOHN TIMBS, 

AUTHOR OF 
"THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN, 
NOTABLE THINGS OF OUR OWN TIME," 






LONDON: 
LOCKWOOD & CO., STATIONERS' HALL COURT. 

MDCCCLXIX. 



$& 



LONDON : 

SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, 

COVENT GARDEN. 



CONTENTS. 



The General Subject. 



chances of history . . 
;reat rulers in history 
:haracters of kings . 
fhe moral of monarchy 
the " ifs " of history . 
the muse of history . 
yorth of historical autho 

RITIES 

tVORTH OF ANTIQUARIANISM 



PAGE 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTI- 
MATE OF ORATORY .... 8 
CHARTERS SIGNED WITH THE 

CROSS 9 

WRITING HISTORY IO 

WORTH OF HERALDRY . . . IO 
WRITING HISTORY FOR THE STAGE II 
TRAVELS OF ANACHARSIS . . 12 



Ancient History. 



'HE DEUCALIONAL DELUGE . 14 
^GYPT : ITS MONUMENTS AND HIS- 
TORY 14 

•LATO SOLD AS A SLAVE . . 1 5 
IOW DEMOSTHENES BECAME AN 

ORATOR 16 

HE HOMERIC POEMS . . . . 16 
[OMER'S BATTLES, AND HIS IMI- 
TATORS . .- 17 

ABULOUS LOCALITIES OF CLAS- 
SIC HISTORY 18 

OLOSSAL ANTS PRODUCING GOLD 19 

SEEK A NEW LANGUAGE . . 19 

IE DEATH OF ^SCHYLUS . . 20 

•IE BATTLE OF ARBELA . . 20 
LEXANDER THE GREAT, AND 

HIS HORSE BUCEPHALUS . . 21 
5RODOTUS, THE FATHER OF 

fTORY 22 

NES : HIS SAYINGS AND 

GS 24 

AND HIS EXPLOITS . . 26 



THE PLAINS OF TROY .... 26 
SOLIMAN "THE MAGNIFICENT" 27 
HISTORY OF EARLY ROME . . 28 
HOW THE CAPITOL OF ROME WAS 
SAVED BY THE CACKLING OF 

GEESE 29 

ROME THE MISTRESS OF THE 
WORLD 30 

extent of the roman empire 3 1 
character of cato . . . . 
c^esar's conquest of gaul . 
middleton's life of cicero . 
the alexandrian library . 
rome under the oligarchy, 
cruelties of han no and the 

carthaginians 36 

hannibal's vinegar passage 

through the alps • • • 37 
corrupt history of the 

middle ages 3 8 

abelard and eloisa . . . 40 



31 
32 
32 

34 
34 



I 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Myths and Popular Fictions. 



" INCREDIBILIA OF THE AN- 
CIENTS, FROM PAL^EPHATUS . 

THE WANDERING JEW . . . 

THE FOUNDING OF CARTHAGE . 

SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON 

SAINT DUNSTAN AND HIS MIRA- 
CLES 

SAINT LUKE NOT A PAINTER . 

FRIAR BACON'S BRAZEN HEAD . 

COLUMBUS AND THE EGG . . 

WILLIAM TELL : A FABLE . . 



41 
42 

44 
45 

47 
49 
49 
50 

5i 



THE TULIPOMANIA .... 
THE NINE WORTHIES . . . 
THE LABYRINTH OF CRETE . 
THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES . f 
COMMON ORIGIN OF POPULA* 

FICTIONS 

THE STORY OF JACK THE C 

KILLER 

THE STORY OF TOM HICKA1 
THE STORY OF TOM THUMB 
LEGEND OF THE CROSS . . . 



Great Events from Little Causes. 



EVENTS AND SCENES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY 



6l- 



British History. 



WHY WAS BRITAIN CALLED 

ALBION? 69 

THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF 

BRITAIN 69 

DOMESDAY BOOK AND ITS PAR- 
TIALITIES 70 

DISPERSION OF ANCIENT MANU- 
SCRIPTS 71 

WHO WAS GILDAS? .... 73 
INGULF OF CROYLAND AND 

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY . 74 
HISTORIC MISREPRESENTATIONS 74 
THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND . . 75 
TEST OF HISTORIC TRUTH . . 76 
DECAY OF LOCAL TRADITION . j-y 
AN ENGLISHMAN'S KNOWLEDGE 

OF HIS COUNTRY'S HISTORY . 78 
HUME'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND . 79 
PERSONAL MOTIVES AND PRE- 
TENDED PATRIOTISM ... 79 
WHITEWASHING REPUTATIONS . 80 
THE CELTS AND THE IRISH COM- 
PARED 8l 

THE CELTIC POPULATION OF 

BRITAIN 81 

PREHISTORIC KINGS OF BRITAIN 82 
THE BRITONS IN THE TIME OF 

C/ESAR 83 

CANNIBALISM IN EUROPE . . 84 



THE TWO ARTHURS AN! 
ROUND TABLE . . - 
ALFRED'S TIME-CANDLES 
BURIAL-PLACE OF HAROLD 
ENGLAND, FROM THE ROMAN 
PERIOD TO THE NORMAN IN- 
VASION 

DID WILLIAM THE CONQI 

DEPOPULATE THE in .V 

FOREST? 

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS . .* 
THE KNIGHT TEMPLARS . . 
THE WAPSHOTTS OF CHERTSEY 
CHARACTER OF OUR NORMAN 

KINGS 

THE STORY OF FAIR ROSAMOND 
STORY OF THE LION KING . . 
THE CRUSADES AND CHIVALRY 
KING JOHN VINDICATED . 
ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH ARIS 

TOCRACY.— MAGNA CHARTS 
WHAT IS ARISTOCRACY? . . 
ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF COM 

MONS 

WHO WAS ROBIN HOOD? . / 
THE BATTLE OF SPURS 
THE BATTLE OF THE TF T " 
WHERE WAS THE FIRST 
OF WALES BORN ? . 



CONTENTS. 



British History — continued. 



PAGE 

WARD U. AT BERKELEY 
CASTLE 112 

ERE CANNON USED AT CRECY? 113 

K ORDER OF THE GARTER . 114 

~HE DE ST. PIERRE AND 

BURGESSES OF CALAIS . 115 

(NCE OF WALES'S FEA- 

S 116 

A i£ V Y-C H A S E, OROTTER- 

BOURNE? 119 

T E EARLS AND DUKES OF 
NORTHUMBERLAND .... 121 
THE POET GOWER, AND THE 

SUTHERLAND FAMILY . . .122 
WARS OF THE ROSES .... 122 
THE PROUD SOMERSETS . . . 123 
WHO WAS JACK CADE? . . . 123 
HENRY IV. AND THE JERUSALEM 

CI lMBER 124 

KING OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT . 125 
STOR T OF JANE SHORE AND 

S T REDITCH 126 

' ' -)ric doubts on richard 

third" 129 

dstead of king richard 

E THIRD 132 

/AS THE DUKE OF CLARENCE 
E DROWNED IN A BUTT OF 

Y r MSEY 134 

r ° IRST PAPER-MILL IN 

uLAND ....... 135 

SIR WILLIAM KINGSTON'S JOCU- 
LAR CRUELTY 136 

SIR THOMAS MORE AND THE 

BUTLERSHIP OF LINCOLN'S INN 137 
ROASTING AN ABBOT , . . . .138 
THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII. . . 139 
TOURNAMENT OF THE FIELD OF 

CLOTH OF GOLD I40 

CARDINAL WOLSEY NOT A 
BUTCHER'S SON . . ... .142 

RISE AND FALL OF WOLSEY . 143 

tSTPRY OF KATHERINE OF ARRA- 
GON AND HER TWO MAR- 
RIAGES 144 

131 '- FIRST-BORN OF HENRY VIII. 

" N ND QUEEN KATHERINE . . 145 
'^.RE WAS ANNE BOLEYN 

^ T ED? 146 

HE LADY KATHERINE 
ESCAPED BEING BURNED 
IERESY 147 

I 



PAGE 

SIR THOMAS WYAT'S BREAK- 
DOWN 147 

CHARACTER OF QUEEN MARY . 148 
HOW THE LADY ELIZABETH ES- 
CAPED THE MACHINATIONS 
OF BISHOP GARDINER . . . 149 
THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA . . 150 
FRENCH PORTRAIT OF QUEEN 

ELIZABETH 150 

SCANDAL AGAINST QUEEN 

ELIZABETH 151 

DARNLEY'S MURDER, 1567 . . 153 
ELIZABETH AND MARY QUEEN 

OF SCOTS 153 

CHARACTER OF MARY QUEEN 

OF SCOTS 154 

SIR WALTER RALEIGH IN THE 

TOWER 156 

SIR WALTER RALEIGH ON THE 

SCAFFOLD 157 

TWO TIPPLING KINGS .... 157 
MYSTERIOUS ROYAL DEATHS . 158 
AN HISTORIC HOUSE IN FLEET- 
STREET 160 

THE AGES OF ELIZABETH AND 

CHARLES 1 160 

QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA, AND 
HER REPUTED PENANCE TO 

TYBURN l6r 

"THE SADDLE LETTER" AND 

CHARLES 1 165 

CHARLES THE FIRST AND HIS 

PARLIAMENT, 1641 . . . . 166 
MARTYRDOM OF CHARLES I. . . 167 
LAST WORDS OF CHARLES I. . 168 
THE CALVES' HEAD CLUB . . 169 
ROYALTY DEDUCED FROM A TUB- 
WOMAN 170 

CHARLES II. IN ADVERSITY AND 

PROSPERITY ...... 17I 

SIR RICHARD WILLIS'S PLOT 

AGAINST CHARLES II. . . . 172 

WEARING OAK ON THE TWENTY- 
NINTH OF MAY 172 

GENERAL MONK'S MARRIAGE . 173 
LA CLOCHE, THE SON OF 

CHARLES II .173 

WHO BUILT CHELSEA HOSPITAL? 174 
THE FIRST DUKE OF ST. ALBAN'S 174 
HOUSES IN WHICH NELL GWYN 

IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED . . 175 
WAS CHARLES II. POISONED? . 175 
b 



CONTENTS, 



British History — continued. 



PAGE 

STRANGE FORTUNES OF THE 

HOUSE OF STUART .... 176 

ENGLISH ADHEkENTS OF THE 

HOUSE OF STUART .... 177 

XINGS AND PRETENDERS . . 178 

SIR RICHARD BAKER'S CHRO- 
NICLE OF THE KINGS OF ENG- 
LAND 179 

DEFENCE OF LORD CHANCELLOR 
JEFFREYS l8l 

FATE OF SIR CLOUDESLEY 

SHOVEL 182 

BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION 183 

AVARICE OF MARLBOROUGH . 1 84 

THE ECCENTRIC SARAH, DUCHESS 
OF MARLBOROUGH .... 186 

WAS GEORGE II. AT THE BATTLE 

OF DETTINGEN ..... 288 

THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE'S 
VAGARIES ....... 188 

THE INSOLVENT THEODORE, EX- 
KING OF CORSICA .... X89 

GENERAL WOLFE, AND THE EX- 
PEDITION TO QUEBEC . . .X92 

QUEEN CHARLOTTE AND ST. 

KATHERINE'S HOSPITAL . . 193 



PAGE 
HORNE TOOKE'S POLITICAL PRE- 
DICTION 194 

LORD MAYOR BECKFORD'S MONU- 
MENTAL SPEECH ..... 196 
THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY . . . 197 
WILKES TRIUMPHANT ! . . . 198 
HOW THE AMERICAN WAR MIGHT 

HAVE BEEN PREVENTED . . 399 
GEORGE HI. AND AMERICAN 

INDEPENDENCE 2CO 

A PAGE OF POLITICAL HATE . 201 
LORD RODNEY IN DIFFICULTIES 201 
CONFERRING THE GARTER . . 202 
PITT AS A WAR MINISTER . . 203 
PITT AND THE PITTITES . . . 204 
WHAT DROVE GEORGE III. MAD 205 
CHARACTER OF LORD NELSON . 207 
FRENCH COLOURS TAKEN AT 

WATERLOO 20S 

GEORGE IV. AND HIS QUEEN . 211 
SIR ROBERT WILSON AS A POLI- 
TICIAN 212 

VISCOUNT MELBOURNE, THE 

MINISTER 213 

ANCESTRY OF VISCOUNT PAL- 

MERSTON 214 

CHARACTERISTICS OF COBBETT 215 



French History. 



THE CHRONICLES OF FROISSART 217 
VANITY OF THE FRENCH . . . 2l8 
AUDACITY OF DU HAILLAN, THE 

FRENCH HISTORIAN .... 21 8 

HOW FRENCH PIISTORY IS WRIT- 
TEN ......... 219 

WAS JOAN OF ARC BURNT AS A 

WITCH? 220 

TRAGIC TALES OF CHARLES VI. 

OF FRANCE . 222 

IOUIS XI 223 

REAL CHARACTER OF LOUIS XIV. 224 
THE ANCIEN REGIME .... 226 
CHARACTER OF CARDINAL 

RICHELIEU 227 

KEEPING PIGEONS IN FRANCE . 228 
THE STORY OF THE "VENGEUR 

DU PEUPLE " 229 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . . 23O 
EXECUTION OF CHARLOTTE 

CORDAY 231 

EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. . . 231 



EXECUTION OF THE DUC D'EN- 
GHIEN ........ 

NAPOLEON'S STAR OF DESTINY. 

LOUIS XIV. AND NAPOLEON I. — 
A PARALLEL 

SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF NAPO- 
LEON I. 

CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. . 

TERRITORY AND MONEY-COST OF 
NAPOLEON'S WARS .... 

THE FRENCH INVASION OF RUS- 
SIA 

SUCCESS OF TALLEYRAND . . 

SUCCESSION TO THE THRONE OF 
FRANCE . . 

HISTORICAL LORE IN THE 
FRENCH SENATE 

THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVIII. 

THE ORLEANS FAMILY . . . 

THE GREAT POLITICAL MONTH 
OF JULY . 

DEFEAT OF THE IMPERIAL 
GUARD AT WATERLOO . . 



232 

235 

235 

236 
237 

240 



240 

241' 

10 


242 10 


24f 10 

24- 10 

244 IC 

I 


245 



CONTENTS. 



XI 



Historico-Political Information. 



PAGE 

THE NATIONAL DEBT .... 247 
"ALL MEN HAVE THEIR PRICE " 247 
BRIBING MEMBERS OF PARLIA- 
MENT 249 

SUPPOSED PREROGATIVE OF THE 
CROWN IN MATTERS OF PEACE, 
WAR, AND ALLIANCES . . . 250 
MARITIME SUPREMACY OF 

ENGLAND 252 

PROPHECIES AND GUESSES . . 254 
CHARACTER OF A TRIMMER . 255 

POTWALLOPERS 255 

ANACHARSIS CLOOTZ .... 256 
MRS. PARTINGTON AND HER 

MOP 256 

KING BOMBA 257 

SIGNING THE TREATY OF 

UTRECHT 257 

HOW THE HABEAS CORPUS ACT 

WAS OBTAINED 258 

SMALL MAJORITIES 258 

FREE-SPEAKING 259 



PAGE 

" CAUCUS" 259 

THE CAVE ADULLAM . . . .260 
FOLLOWING AND LEADING . . 261 
LEGITIMACY AND GOVERNMENT 261 
"MEASURES, NOT MEN" . . 261 
A SUFFERER BY REVOLUTIONS . 263 
ORIGIN OF CROSS-READINGS IN 

NEWSPAPERS 262 

POLITICAL NICKNAMES . . . 263 

WASTE OF LIFE 264 

THE MONEY-COST OF WAR . . 265 
ABSOLUTE MONARCHY OF DEN- 
MARK 266 

INVASION PANICS OF 1 847-8 AND 

1851 267 

SEEKING A PLACE 269 

THE MODERN GREEKS . . . 27O 
"SIGHTS THAT I HAVE SEEN ". 271 
MORGANATIC MARRIAGES . . 273 
CHARACTER OF THE NABOB . 274 
MEMORY OF DANIEL O'CONNELL 276 



Ecclesiastical History. 



SPURIOUS CHARTERS .... 277 

THE INQUISITION 278 

FIGHTING ABBOTS AND PRE- 
LATES OF THE MIDDLE AGES 279 
ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS 

A BECKET 280 

HOSTILITY TO HOBBES .... 285 
WHO WERE THE PURITANS ? . 285 
THE STORY OF JOHN OF LEYDEN 286 
EXHUMATION OF BODIES. — 

WORTH OF RELICS .... 288 

CREDULITY OF GREAT MINDS . 289 

TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS . 290 

WHO WAS APOLLONIUS OF 

TYANA? 291 



WHAT IS PANTHEISM?. . . . 

WHAT IS MUSCULAR CHRISTI- 
ANITY? 

PROPHECY-RIDDEN PRINCES . . 

THE REFORMATION — LUTHER 
AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION . 

FABLES ABOUT LUTHER . . . 

PORTRAIT OF MOHAMMED . . 

ORIGIN OF KISSING THE POPE'S 
TOE, AND THE LATERAN . . 

THE HISTORIC CHURCH OF ENG- 
LAND 

BURNING OF VEDAS WIDOWS . 



292 

293 
294 

295 
296 

297 
298 

298 
300 



Retributive Justice. 

CURIOUS INSTANCES IN ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY 



301—304 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



Science applied to the Arts. 



PAGE 

PREHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY. . 305 
MAN UPON THE EARTH . . . 306 
GEOLOGY AND HISTORY . . . 307 
WHO ARE THE IMPROVERS OF 

MANKIND ? 308 

SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION . 309 
WHO DISCOVERED THE COMPO- 
SITION OF WATER ? . . . . 31O 

WHO INVENTED THE STEAM- 
ENGINE? ....... 311 

THE OLD PHILOSOPHERS . . . 314 
SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S APPLE- 
TREE, ETC 315 

WHAT THE ENGLISH OWE TO 

NATURALIZED FOREIGNERS . 318 
THE ALPHONSINE TABLES . . 319 
GREEK ART 319 



PAGE 
INVENTION OF THE LOCOMOTIVE 320 
ENGINEERING MISCALCULATION 320 
THE "GREAT EASTERN " STEAM- 
SHIP AND THE ARK . . .321 
HISTORY OF MANNERS . . . 322 

ASSYRIAN ART 323 

FASHIONS IN DRESS — MALE AND 

FEMALE 323 

HOUBRAKEN'S HEADS .... 324 
STORY OF AN ARUNDEL MARBLE 324 
VAST BUILDINGS ERECTED BY 

SLAVERY 325 

THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRE- 
LAND 325 

FALLACIES OF STATISTICS . . 326 
THE LAST HALF CENTURY OF 
INVENTIONS 327 



Books, Phrases, etc. 



FALSE ESTIMATES OF POPULAR 

BOOKS 329 

BIRTHDAY OF SHAKSPEARE 

AND CERVANTES 333 

MODERN MYTHOLOGY .... 333 
FATE OF AMBITIOUS RULERS . 335 
THE STORY OF DIDO .... 335 



BURNING ALIVE . . . 

WHO'S WHO .... 

THE GREAT MOGUL 

AN INGENIOUS FORGERY 

HISTORICAL PHRASES . 

THE BOROUGH OF OLD SARUM 

WHAT IS BUNCOMBE? . . . 



336 
336 
33 6 
338 
339 
340 
341 



Appendix. 



LEADERS OF THE ENGLISH REBELLION 



342 



%* The " Ifs " of History, pp. 3—6, omitted to be acknowledged, — n 
Abridged from an able paper in the Saturday Review. to 



HISTORIC NINEPINS, 




Cfre (Smeral Subject* 

CHANCES OF HISTORY. 

ATIONS will more readily part with the essentials than with the 
forms of liberty ; and Napoleon might have died an emperor in 
reality, if he had been contented to have lived a consul in name. 
Had Cromwell displayed his hankerings for royalty somewhat 
sooner than he did, it is probable that he would have survived his power. 
Mr. Pitt gained a supremacy in this country, which none of his predecessors 
dared to hope, and which none of his successors will, we trust, attempt 
to attain. For twenty years he was " de facto" not " de jure" a king. 
But he was wise in his generation, and took care to confine the swelling 
stream of his ambition to channels that were constitutional ; and with 
respect to the impurity, the filth, and the corruption of those channels, 
he trusted to the vast means he possessed of alarming the weak, blinding 
the acute, bribing the mercenary, and intimidating the bold : confiding 
his own individual security, to that selfishness inherent in our nature, 
which dictates to the most efficient mind, to have too much respect for itself 
to become a Catiline, and too little esteem for others to become a Cato. 
There was a short period in the Roman history, when that nation en- 
joyed as much liberty as is compatible with the infirmities of humanity. 
Their neighbours the Athenians, had much of the form, but little of the 
substance, of freedom ; disputers about this rich inheritance rather than 
enjoyers of it, the Athenians treated liberty, as schismatics religion, 
where the true benefits of both have been respectively lost to each by 
their rancorous contentions about them. 



GREAT RULERS IN HISTORY. 

Lord Macaulay, in his admirable paper on the great Lord Clive, has 
rthe following remarks upon the rules for judging the conduct of eminent 
(H-ulers : — " Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The 
< greatest desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge of the slightest 
' firansgression. If a man has sold beer on Sunday morning, it is no de- 
fence that he has saved the life of a fellow-creature at the risk of his own. 
jif he has harnessed a Newfoundland dog to his little child's carriage, it 
2is no defence that he was wounded at Waterloo. But it is not in this 
Avay that we ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary 

J. B 



CHARACTERS OF KINGS. 



restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary temptations, are entitled 
to a more than ordinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be 
judged by their contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. 
Their bad actions ought not, indeed, to be called good ; but their good 
and bad actions ought to be fairly weighed; and if, on the whole, the 
good preponderate, the sentence ought to be one, not merely of acquit- 
tal, but of approbation. Not a single great ruler in history can be 
absolved by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably on one or two unjusti- 
fiable acts. Bruce, the deliverer of Scotland ; Maurice, the deliverer of 
Germany; William, the deliverer of Holland; his great descendant, the 
deliverer of England ; Murray, the good Regent ; Cosmo, the father of his 
country ; Henry the Fourth of France ; Peter the Great of Russia — how 
would the best of them pass such a scrutiny ? History takes wider 
views ; and the best tribunal for great political cases is the tribunal which 
anticipates the verdict of history." 



CHARACTERS OF KINGS. 

Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann, in 1764: — "Count 
Poniatowski, with whom I was acquainted when he was here, is King 
of Poland, and calls himself Stanislaus the Second. This is the sole in- 
stance, I believe, upon record, of a second of a name being on the throne 
while the first was living, without having contributed to dethrone him. 
Old Stanislaus lives to see a line of successors, like Macbeth in the cave 
of the witches. So much for Poland ! Don't let us go farther north ; 
we shall find there Alecto herself. I have almost wept for poor Ivan. 
[The deposed Czar Ivan, attempting to make his escape, had been 
murdered ; but it is very doubtful whether the Czarina could be privy 
to his death.] I shall soon begin to believe that Richard III. murdered 
as many folks as the Lancastrians say he did. I expect that this Fury 
will poison her son next, lest Semiramis should have the bloody honour 
of having been more unnatural. As Voltaire has poisoned so many per- 
sons of former ages, methinks he ought to do as much for the present 
time, and assure posterity that there never was such a lamb as Catherine 
the Second, and that, so far from assassinating her own husband and 
Czar Ivan, she wept over every chicken that she had for dinner. How 
crimes, like fashions, flit from clime to clime! Murder reigns under the 
State, while you, who are in the very town where Catherine de' Medici 
was born, and within a stone's-throw of Rome, where Borgia and his 
holy father sent cardinals to the other world by hecatombs, are surprised 
to hear that there is such an instrument as a stiletto. 

" I have no more monarchs to chat over ; all the rest are the most 
Catholic or most Christian, or most something or other that is 
divine ; and you know one can never talk long about folks that are only 
excellent. One can say no more about Stanislaus the First than 1$ 
that he is the best of beings. I mean, unless they do not deserve il 
it, and then their flatterers can hold forth upon their virtues by the * ' 
hour." 



105 



THE "IFS" OF HISTORY. 



THE MORAL OF MONARCHY. 

" A man may read a sermon," says Jeremy Taylor, " the best and 
most passionate that ever man preached, if he shall but enter into the se- 
pulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live 
in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed 
a cemetery where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be 
no more : and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie 
interred, and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his 
crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest 
change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from 
living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames 
of lust, to abate the height of pride, to appease the itch of covetous de- 
sires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, 
and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortu- 
nate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their 
dust, and lay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world, 
that when we die our ashes shall be equal to kings, and our accounts 
shall be easier, and our pains for our crimes shall be less. To my appre- 
hension, it is a sad record which is left by Athenaeus, concerning Ninus, 
the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these 
words: 'Ninus, the Assyrian, had an ocean of gold, and other riches 
more than the sand in the Caspian Sea ; he never saw the stars, and per- 
haps he never desired it ; he never stirred up the holy fire among the 
Magi, nor touched his God with the sacred rod, according to the laws; 
he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the Deity, nor administered 
justice, nor spake to the people, nor numbered them ; but he was most 
valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines, he threw the rest 
upon the stones. This man is dead : behold his sepulchre, and now 
hear where Ninus is. Sometime I was Ninus, and drew the breath of a 
living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but 'what I 
did eat, and what 1 served to myself in lust is all my portion : the wealth 
with which I was blest, my enemies meeting together shall carry away, 
as the mad Ihyades carry a raw) goat. I am gone to Hell ; and when I 
went thither, I carried neither gold nor horses, nor a silver chariot. I 
that wore a mitre, am now) a little heap of dust /" 



THE "IFS OF HISTORY. 

If something had happened which didn't happen, what would have hap- 
pened afterwards ? is a kind of speculation which is now much in fashion. 
* Of course, no one can answer positively the above inquiry. Yet, in 
: looking back upon the course of history, it is impossible not to dwell 
I for a moment upon some of the more important crises, and to remark 
I* how small a difference might have made an incalculable change. We 
'know the usual sayings about the decisive battles of the world. If 
Themistocles had lost the battle of Salamis, if Asdrubal had won 
| the battle of the Metaurus, if Charles M artel had been beaten by the 

B 2 



THE "IPS" OF HISTORY. 



Saracens, would not the subsequent history of Europe and the world 
have been altered, and a great many fine philosophical theories have been 
destroyed before their birth ? 

Even the strictest believer in universal causation may admit without 
prejudice to his opinions that the most trivial circumstances may be of 
cardinal importance. The reluctance to admit the doctrine about great 
events springing from trivial causes results from another consequence of 
the theory. Where the fate of a few persons is concerned, no one cares 
to dispute it. When Noah was in the Ark, the most trifling error of 
steering might (in the absence of providential interference) have ship- 
wrecked the whole human race. Now the logical difficulties raised by 
Necessitarians apply just as much to a party of twenty as to twenty 
millions. The importance of small cases does not affect their theory 
more in one case than the other. But philosophers are unwilling to 
allow that the fate of whole countries and many generations can depend 
upon these petty accidents, because it would obviously render all pre- 
diction impossible, and at least leave the future of mankind dependent 
upon the chance of the necessary hero arising at the critical moment. 

It is impossible here to discuss so large a question as the frequency 
with which those historical crises occur in which the merest trifle may 
turn the balance, or to inquire whether they ever occur at all. But we 
may notice shortly two or three conditions of the argument which are 
frequently overlooked, and which make most of these discussions emi- 
nently unsatisfactory. Thus, for example, the believers in decisive bat- 
tles very seldom take the trouble even to argue the real difficulty of the 
question. The defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, or perhaps at Waterloo, it 
has been said, changed the history of Europe. It may be so ; but the 
fact that a particular battle was the most crushing, or the final blow which 
he received, does not even tend, to prove that a different result woul 
have been equally decisive the other way. On the contrary, a victor 
might probably have been the next worst thing to a defeat. The battle 
in which the Saracens or the Hungarians received the final check to their 
advance are in the same way reckoned as decisive of history. But, to 
make this out, we should have to prove that which is at first sight op- 
posed to all probability — that, in the event of a victory, they could have 
permanently held their conquests ; and afterwards that, if they had held 
them, they would not have been absorbed by the conquered population. 
When Canute rebuked his courtiers, he happened to select a time at 
which the tide was rising. If, by a little management, they had induced 
him to give the order just as the tide turned, they might perhaps have 
persuaded him that his order was the cause of the change. A good 
many historical heroes seem to have been Canutes who issued their com- 
mands precisely at the turn of the tide, and historical writers have been 
crying out ever since that, if it had not been for this marvellous Canute, 
the tide would have swelled until the whole country had been en- 
gulphed. The analogy is, of course, imperfect; for the historical tide 
is really affected in some degree by the hero who opposes its progress at 
the proper moment, only he has a wonderful advantage if he happens to 
strikejust at the fortunate epoch. — Saturday Review, 



1 



THE (i IFS" OF HISTORY. 



The absurdity of a series of " ifs " has also been thus shown. " If 
this did not happen, then something else must have happened, and the 
whole course of subsequent events must have been altered." It is one ot 
those far-fetched explanations which we can produce at will to account 
for any phenomenon. We might say, for instance, that the prophet 
Jonah is the cause of American slavery. If he had not preached, 
Nineveh would not have repented ; if Nineveh had not repented, it would 
have been overthrown ; if it had been overthrown, who knows the con- 
sequences ? The whole course of empire would have been changed, 
and America might still be a forest. 

Mr. Phillimore, in his History of England in the Reign of George III., 
describes the difficulty of writing modern history, and laments that in 
modern times we have no Herodotus nor Thucydides, no Livy nor 
Tacitus. He says, that if these Greek and Roman historians lived in 
our day — if they saw this, and if they saw that, if they were acquainted 
with India, if they were acquainted with America, and if they knew a 
great number of other things besides — the result, the grand result, the 
astonishing result, would be that they would have known more than 
they knew, and would have told us more. 

In Whitaker's Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots, that curious writer 
thus speculates in the true spirit of this paper. When dependence was 
made upon Elizabeth's dying without issue, the Countess of Shrewsbury 
had her son purposely residing in London, with two good and able horses 
continually ready, to give the earliest intelligence of the sick Elizabeth's 
death to the imprisoned Mary. On this the historian observes, " And 
had this not improbable event actually taken place, 'what a different com- 
plexion would our history have assumed from what it wears at present ! 
Mary would have been carried from a prison to a throne. Her wise 
conduct in prison would have been applauded by all. From Tutbury, 
from Sheffield, and from Chatsworth, she would have been said to have 
touched with a gentle and masterly hand the springs that actuated all 
j the nation, against the death of her tyrannical cousin," &c. So ductile 
is history in the hands of man ! and so peculiarly does it bend to the 
force of success, and warp with the warmth of prosperity ! 

" If Mary had lived a little longer, or Elizabeth died sooner," says 
Mr. Mill, "the Reformation would have been crushed in England. 
People who believe in a steady development of human thought, are 
naturally unwilling to allow that the spread of new ideas may be 
arrested or made possible by the accident of a single woman's life ; for, 
on the same principles, we can have no certainty that in a few years hence 
j we may not all be Roman Catholics, or Mormons, or followers of Comte." 
T It is always a question among military writers how far the pause of 
Hannibal was compulsory — a question not likely now to be solved, 
unless Pompeii yields us further literary treasures. As far as one can 
decide at such a distance of time and of scene, it seems all but certain 
that the rapid advance of Hannibal on Rome after the battle of Cannae, 
that of Henry of Navarre on Paris after the battle of Ivry, or that of 
Charles Stuart on London after penetrating as far as Derby, would have 
changed the course of human history. — Builder, 186S. 



" THE MUSE OF HISTORY^ 



"THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 

In an able review of Mr. Froude's History of England, vols. v. and vi., 
the writer thus reproves a fashion of writing history in the present day, 
which is unsound and misrepresentative. " History/' says the critic, 
" is one of those pursuits which have been blest with a Muse, and for 
the love of this excellent lady, historians are continually aiming at the 
heroic. They select a theme — the life of a nation within a particular 
century. They represent this life as actuated by the sublimest motives 
which they can invent. The heroes are patriots fighting for the inde- 
pendence of their homes, or citizens resisting the encroachments of 
tyranny, or believers animated by the ardours of a religious struggle. 
There is an epic grandeur in the action. The men are giants ; then- 
motives are divine, and the result is sacred. The history of our own 
times is paltry in comparison. In writing contemporary history, we are 
obliged to confine ourselves to the facts before us ; and what are these 
facts ? That statesmanship in its last analysis is reduced to a question 
of finance ; that Cocker is the greatest of our Ministers ; that the re- 
sumption of cash payments, the repeal of a duty, the discovery of a gold 
mine, the accident of a potato-blight, the sale of opium, and the state 
of the Three per Cents, are the dominant elements of our political life ; 
and that, however we may prate of Church and State, life and liberty, 
most of the leading questions of the day reduce themselves by a very 
simple process to the old eternal question of the big loaf, the little loaf, 
and the payment of the piper. By way of contrast, look at any history 
of the Tudor reigns, including even the work of Mr. Froude. We at 
once leap to the conclusion that there were people of simple faith and 
noble aspirations in those days, who were raised high above the petty con- 
cerns which trouble nations now. They thought more of the remission 
of sins than of the reduction of taxes. They were more interested in 
the mass than in their daily bread. The Bible supplied the place of 
Consols in public regard. The rate of wages and the price of mutton 
were matters of indifference ; but the sermon preached at Paul's Cross 
and the last bull from the Pope were affairs of the greatest moment. 
Whether the revenue of the year was short and the expenditure of the 
country was excessive, were inquiries completely overshadowed by ques- 
tions relating to the religious nurture of the boy-King, or the religious 
sentiments of the Queen's betrothed. We observe that the whole 
nation is intent on mighty speculations as to fate and free will, the real 
presence, the Pope's authority, and justification by faith ; and it is only 
when we come to the appendix that we find huddled together a few 
scraps of information as to the state of the currency, the price of wheat, 
and the amount of the public income. We have surely had quite enough 
of this highflying style of history. We would say nothing disrespect- 
ful of the Muse who has inspired some very pretty histories in her time. 
We only wish that historians would give her a holyday for a little while, 
and come down to the sober level of facts. Human nature is pretty 
much the same all the world over, and the nature of nations has a won- 
derful similarity from age to age. That 300 years ago a nation which 






WORTH OF HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES. 7 

now grovels in pursuit of gain, and aims at physical perfection, was all 
for romance and spiritual profit, is a fallacy which we leave to the poets, 
but deny to the historian. With regard to our own history, and with 
regard to a period of it not very far removed from the present time, a 
purifying criticism is required similar to that which the German scholars 
have applied to the early legends of Greece and Rome. The history of 
England during the sixteenth century, which witnessed the revival of 
letters and the reform of religion, has a legendary tone about it from 
which even Mr. Froude's volumes are not entirely free. — Times t 1 860. 



WORTH OF HISTORICAL AUTHORITIES. 

Among the various kinds of original authorities, some form the main 
staple of our knowledge of one age, and some of another. For old Greek 
and Roman history, we have to rely mainly on literary evidence — the 
direct statements of historians, and the incidental allusions of other 
writers. Of strictly documentary evidence we have none, except what 
may be found in coins and inscriptions. This is of course partly the 
result of the destruction of documents, but it is far more extensively 
owing to their original paucity. The Greeks not only had no printing, 
but they were incomparably more chary of writing than our forefathers 
of the Middle Ages. This was owing to several causes — to their general 
out-door life, to the publicity of everything in so many of their govern- 
ments, and to the awkward and costly nature of their writing materials. 
Public documents took the form of inscriptions on brass or stone; 
when the state of things which they expressed ceased to exist, the visible 
memorial of that state of things was often taken away. If Athens and 
Sparta made a treaty, its terms were graven on a pillar ; the next time 
war broke out, the pillar was taken away. The best chance of a docu- 
ment surviving the state of things which it described was if some historian 
like Thucydides or Polybius thought fit to insert it bodily in his text. 
And this not only confines modern inquirers almost wholly to literary 
sources ; it gives a peculiar character to the literary sources themselves. 
If Mr. Kinglake sits down nowadays to write the history of the Crimean 
war, besides his personal knwledge and the oral reports of eye-witnesses, 
he has before him vast masses of literary material. Thucydides, in 
writing the history of his own contemporaries, Herodotus, in writing the 
history of his father's contemporaries, could have got nearly all their 
information by word of mouth. This was not wholly a disadvantage ; 
for there can be no doubt that, where there are few artificial helps to 
memory, the memory itself becomes much stronger and clearer. When 
people read so much about everything as we do now, and read it, too, fcr 
the most part, so very hastily and superficially, it is wonderful how fast 
they forget things. Altogether, though the old writers had to trust mainly 
to oral information, yet the oral information to which they had to trust 
must have been of a much higher kind than most oral information now. 
And one can hardly doubt that the sort of reflexion and inquiry thus 
needed, the necessity of personal recollection for many things and of 



8 ESTIMATE OF ORATORY, 



personal intercourse with actors for others, had something to do in pro- 
ducing that peculiar and unapproachable character which distinguishes 
the best of the old Greek histories from all other human writings — 
Abridged from the Saturday Review. 

» 

WORTH OF ANTIQUARIANISM. 
m Antiquarianism has been pronounced, by high authority to be "an 
indispensable element in history." Unquestionably it is so Yet 
nothing is more certain than that histories of steady popularity and 
considerable renown have been written without it. In one sense indeed 
it is of very modern growth and culture. Real antiquarianism ' defined 
as a lively knowledge of the past, comprehending the spirit of a period 
through the details of its customs, events, and institutions, may of course 
be exercised m any direction ; in Athens and Attica, or at Stonehenge 
SJ? ifT^, • , e 1S aS much anti q« a "anism in Arnold's Thucydides, or 
Mitchell s Aristophanes, as in any cubic foot of the Gentleman's Magazine. 
And there are few generations without individual examples of this spirit 
J3ut the conventional import of the term is a particular and circumstan- 
tial knowledge of the men, manners, and events of the Middle Ages a 
knowledge m which the writers of the last century could hardly have 
been otherwise than deficient, since they openly treated it with contempt 
Hume considers it a singular proof of Horace Walpole's eloquence that 
he succeeded m attracting attention to so obsolete a subject as the'reien 
of Richard HI. The judgments of these writers have accordingly been 
liable to reversal, and their misstatements to exposure. Whether the 
opinions of later generations may have gone too far in an opposite direc- 
tion, is a point which we shall not here discuss ; but the change of sen- 
timent has certainly been for the advantage of medieval history. One 
remarkable improvement is in the circumstantial detail of the narrative 
Compare the return cf Edward IV., or the reign of Edward V. in 
Turner, with the like portions in Hume, and the contrast will be most 
striking. It is by this method of proceeding, by entering into the spirit 
or an age by living for a while in the language of its writers, by handling 
its relics, by contemplating the monuments of its sciences and its arts and 
by concentrating upon one object the numberless rays of light which are 
thus procurable, that the modern historian of the Middle Ages must hope 
tosupplythe deficiency of acontemporary authority.— Quarterly Review. 

o ■ 
ANCIENT AND MODERN ESTIMATE OF ORATORY. 
There are no potentates of modern times that would imitate Philip 
arid offer a town containing ten thousand inhabitants for an orator 
The ancients were a gossiping and a listening rather than a writing or 
a reading set. This circumstance gave an orator great opportunities of 
display ; for the tongue effects that for thoughts that the Press does for 
words; but the tongue confers on them a much shorter existence and 
produces them in a far less tangible shape— two circumstances that are 
often not unfavourable to the speechifier. An ancient demagogue said 



CHARTERS SIGNED WITH THE CROSS. 9 

that so long as the people had ears, he would rather that they should be 
without understandings. All good things here below have their draw- 
backs, and all evil things their compensations. The drawback of the 
advantage of printing is, that it enables coxcombs to deluge us with 
dulness ; and the compensation for the want of that art was this, that 
if blockheads wrote nonsense, no one else would transcribe it : neither 
could they take their trash to the market, when it cost so much time 
and labour to multiply the copies. Booksellers are like horse-dealers in 
one respect, and, if they buy the devil, they must also sell the devil ; but 
the misfortune is, that a bookseller seldom understands the merits of a 
book so thoroughly as the horsedealer the merits of a horse, and reads 
with far less judgment than the other rides. But to return to the 
speechifiers. An orator who, like Demosthenes, appeals to the head 
rather than the heart, who resorts to argument, not to sophistry, who 
has no sounding words, unsupported by strong conceptions, who would 
rather convince without persuading than persuade without convincing, 
is an exception to all rules, and would succeed in all periods. When 
the Roman people had listened to the loud, diffuse, and polished dis- 
courses of Cicero, they departed, saying to one another, what a splendid 
speech our orator has made ; but when the Athenians heard Demos- 
thenes, he so filled them with the subject-matter of his oration, that they 
quite forgot the orator, but left him at the finish of his harangue, 
breathing revenge, and exclaiming, " Let us go and fight against Philip. — 
Colton's Lacon. 



CHARTERS SIGNED WITH THE CROSS. 

The practice of affixing the sign of the Cross proceeded from the 
inability of the signers to write : this is honestly avowed by Caedwalla, 
a Saxon king, at the end of one of his charters. A similar circumstance 
is related of the Emperor Justin in the East, and Theodore, king of the 
Goths in Italy. Procopius, in his Historic Arcana, says : " Justin, not 
being able to write his name, had a thin, smooth piece of board, through 
which were cut the four letters of his name, J. V. S. T., which, laid on 
the paper, served to direct the point of his pen, his hand being guided 
by another. Possibly this may likewise have given the hint to the first 
of our card-makers, who paint their cards in the same manner, by plates 
of pewter or copper, or only pasteboard, with slits in them in form of 
the figures that are to be painted on the cards." {Philosophical Trans- 
actions, vol. xl. p. 393.) This is the art of stencil, which has been applied, 
in our time, to decorating the walls of rooms, as well as to the marking 
of linen. 

Charlemagne used his monogram for his signature, for which Eginhard 
gives this as the reason : namely, that Charlemagne could not write ; 
and, having attempted in vain to learn in his grown age, he was reduced 
to the necessity of signing with his monogram. 

The probable reason why the Cross was always used in the Middle 
Ages in the testing of ecclesiastical charters, was not only that it was a 
sacred symbol, but that Justinian had decreed it should have the strength 
of an oath. 



i o WOR TH OF HERALD R Y. 



WRITING HISTORY. 

Many writers, including now an Imperial historian, have attempted 
to weigh and measure the share that individual men and accidents have 
in the course of human affairs. How far has the world really been 
affected by Alexander, or by the cold bath that cut him off in his very 
youth ; by the day's march of Claudius Nero, that drove the Carthagi- 
nians out of Italy, and led to the ruin of their State ; by the mighty 
genius, or the assassination, of Julius Caesar ; by the arrow that pierced 
Harold, or the bullet that killed Charles XII., of Sweden ; by the pas- 
sions of our Henry VIII., by the obstinacy of Charles I., or by the 
religious convictions of James II. ; by the cold ragout which is said to 
have deprived Napoleon of one victory, or the timely arrival of the 
Prussians, which extinguished all hope of another ? History must deal 
with persons and things, and it must also clothe them with dramatic 
interest and importance, but philosophers are apt to think them only the 
superficial indications of an irresistible current below. A despot is mur- 
dered, but the despotism remains. A great soldier falls, but the nation 
is not less warlike. — Times journal. 

When, after the victory of Aumale, in which Henry IV. was wounded, 
he called his generals round his bed, to give him an account of what 
had occurred subsequently to his leaving the field, no two could agree 
on the course of the very events in which they had been actors ; and 
the king, struck with the difficulty of ascertaining facts so evident and 
recent, exclaimed, " Voila ce que cest Vhistoire (" — " What, then, is 
history!" 

" Give me my liar," was the phrase in which Charles V. was used to 
call for a volume of history; and certainly no man can attentively 
examine any important period of our annals without remarking that 
almost every incident admits of two handles, almost every character of 
two interpretations ; and that by a judicious packing of facts the histo- 
rian may make his picture assume nearly what form he pleases without 
any direct violation of truth.— Quarterly Review, 1832. 



WORTH OF HERALDRY. 

The only individuals who affect to sneer at Heraldic pursuits and 
studies are those of apocryphal gentility, or whose ancestral reminiscences 
are associated with the rope sinister, or some such distinctive badge. 
Heraldry is, however, a branch of the hieroglyphical language, and the 
only branch which has been handed down to us with a recognised key. 
It in many cases represents the very names of persons, their birth, 
family, and alliances ; in others, it illustrates their ranks and titles; and 
in all is, or rather was, a faithful record of their illustrious deeds, 
represented by signs imitative and conventional. Taking this view of 
the question, it is evident that it is capable of vast improvements : in 
fact, a well-emblazoned shield might be made practically to represent, 



WRITING HISTORY FOR THE STAGE. it 

at a single glance, a synopsis of biography, chronology, and history. 
Insignia of individuals and races, which are of a kindred character with 
heraldry, at least in its original form and design, may be recognised 
among the nations of antiquity, and may perhaps be carried back to the 
primeval ages of Egyptian history. The Israelites, from their long cap- 
tivity familiarized with such objects, naturally adopted them as distin- 
guishing characteristics ; and Sir William Drummond believed that the 
twelve tribes adopted the signs of the zodiac as their respective ensigns ; 
" nor," as has been observed, " does the supposed allusion to those signs 
by Jacob imply anything impious, magical, or offensive to the Deity." 

The heraldry (?) of the heroic ages may be traced in the pages of 
Homer and iEschylus ; and in the succeeding generations we have 
testimony of the adoption of a sort of armorial bearings by the princes 
of Greece. Omitting Nicias, Lamachus, Alcibiades, and others on 
record, we will merely observe that the arms of Niochorus, who slew 
Lysander, were a dragon, thus realizing the prediction of the oracle, 

Fly from Oplites' watery strand ; 
The earth-born serpent, too, beware. 

Nor were mottoes by any means unfrequent. The shield which 
Demosthenes so pusillanimously threw away was inscribed " To good 
Fortune." 

The animals which are frequently represented within shields on the 
Roman vases sufficiently establish the fact, that this usage was common 
amongst that great people ; and the striking example of a goat on a 
specimen in the British Museum, might by analogy, without any great 
stretch of imagination, be ascribed to the family of Caprus ! 

Students of heraldry are commonly great enthusiasts ; so that, in its 
pursuit, they are apt to depreciate more important subjects. We 
remember to have heard an amateur herald painter, who had filled all 
his windows with arms of his own painting, condemn Mr. Salt's collec- 
tion of Egyptian Antiquities in terms of unmistakeable contempt ! — 
Knowledge for the Time, 1864, p. 85. 



WRITING HISTORY FOR THE STAGE. 
Sheridan's popular play of Pizarro owes much of its success to its 
sentiments, chiefly made up by Sheridan from his speeches on the trial 
of Warren Hastings, and on the subject of the invasion. The most 
objectionable point in the original arrangement of the piece is the ill- 
contrived and almost ludicrous manner in which retributive justice is 
dealt on Pizarro, who, after being bullied through five acts by Alonzo, 
Elvira, and Rolla in succession, is killed unfairly in the end, as Porson 
commemorates in his amusing parody : — 

Four acts are tol, lol ; but the fifth's my delight ; 

Where history's trac'd with the pen of a Varro ; 
And Elvira in black, and Alonzo in white, 

Put an end to the piece by killing Pizarro. 



1 2 TRA VELS OF ANA CHA RSIS. 

It is but just to the memory of Kotzebue to remark, that this gross 
departure from historical fact was a gratuitous interpretation by- 
Sheridan. Every schoolboy might have known and remembered that 
Pizarro lived to conquer Peru, and was finally assassinated in his vice- 
regal palace at Lima by the son and friend of his early associate, 
Almagro, whom he executed some years before. 

The inflated, false sentiments of the play have received this chastise- 
ment from a contemporary critic :— " It is observable and not a little 
edifying to observe, that when those who excel in a spirit of satire above 
everything else come to attempt serious specimens of the poetry and 
romance whose exaggerations they ridicule, they make ridiculous mis- 
takes of their own, and of the very same kind, — so allied is the habitual 
want of faith with want of all higher power." 



TRAVELS OF ANACHARSIS. 

This popular work of the Abbe Barthelemy, first published in 1788, 
is a strange admixture of fiction with real facts, which is not very 
favourable to historical accuracy. Barthelemy supposes a young 
Scythian, of the name of Anacharsis, acquainted with the language of 
the Greeks, to have made a journey into Greece in search of informa- 
tion, and to have resided many years in its principal cities, between 
363 and 337 B.C. The greater part of this period corresponds with the 
reign of Philip of Macedonia till the battle of Cheronsea, after which 
Anacharsis is made finally to leave Greece and return to Scythia, where 
he is supposed to have compiled a narrative of his travels and observa- 
tions in Greece. Barthelemy's object in writing the Anacharsis was to 
revive among the people of his age the taste for ancient erudition, to 
vindicate it from the supercilious contempt of the philosophers of the 
day, and to show the utility of such studies. "In this work the Abbe 
enlightens us on the memorable battle of Thermopylae, where Leonidas, 
instead of resisting the Persians with three hundred men, commanded, 
according to Diodorus, at least seven thousand, or even twelve thou- 
sand, if we may believe Pausanias." — See Delepierre's Historical Difficul- 
ties and Contested Events, p. 8. 

Horace Walpole criticises Barthelemy with much verve. In a letter 
to the Countess of Ossory, he writes : — " I am reading the Anacharsis 
of the Abbe Barthelemy, four most corpulent quartos, into which he 
has amassed, and, indeed, very ingeniously arranged, every passage I 
believe (for aught I know) that is extant in any Greek or Latin author, 
which gives any account of Greece, and all and every part of it ; but, 
alas ! I have not yet waded through the second volume — a sure sign that 
the appetite of my eyes has decayed. I can read now but for amuse- 
ment. It is not at all necessary to improve one's self for the next world, 
especially as one's knowledge will probably not prove standard there. 
The Abbe is, besides, a little too partial to the Grecian accounts of 
their own virtues, and, as Dr. Pauw and Dr. Gillies have lately un- 
hinged their scale of merits, a rehabilitation is no business of mine." In 



TRAVELS OF ANACHARSIS. 13 

another letter to the Countess, Walpole writes : — " The Abbe's book 
is extremely well described by a Mosaic compound all-bits of truth; but, 
alas ! the pavement is a fiction, and not slippery enough to make one 
slide over it. It is, as Mrs. Darner says, a vision — a dream about truths ; 
in short, it is an excellent work for a man of twenty-five, just fresh from 
the classics, and would range them most compendiously in his head, and 
he would know where to find any parcel he should want on occasion ; 
but for me, I have not been able to wade to the end of the second 
volume. I cannot gulp again the reveries of the old philosophers on the 
origin of the world, and still less the foolish romances of Herodotus, 
such as that of the patriotic courtier who cut off his own nose and ears 
in order to betray Babylon to Darius. Iron tears may fall down Pluto's 
cheek when he sees Nebuchadnezzar come to himself; yet even that I 
should not believe at the distance of two thousand years ! Then, 
having just read Dr. Gillies and Mr. Pauw, I cannot for the life of me 
admire the Lacedemonians again, nor listen gravely to the legend of 
Lycurgus, when Mr. Pauw has proved it very doubtful whether any 
such person existed. If there did, he only refined savages into greater 
barbarism. I will tell your Ladyship an additional observation that I 
made just as I broke off with Anacharsis. We are told that Lycurgus 
allowed theft, and enjoined community of goods. I beg to know 
where was the use of stealing where there was no individual property ? 
Does stealth consist in filching what is your own as much as any other 
man's ? It would be like Mr. Cumberland, who steals from himself." 

Again : " I allow all the merit of Anacharsis, and do believe your 
Ladyship reads it ; but I know that its great vogue at Paris, on its first 
appearance, was during the first fortnight, when, to be sure, nobody 
had got through thirty pages of the first volume. I penetrated a great 
way, and, though I was tired of it, it was not from any faults I found, 
but it did not interest me in the least. Mrs. Darner is a convert, and is 
now reading it. I broke off at the Lacedemonians, whom I abhor, 
though I allow the merit your Ladyship so justly admires in them — 
their brevity." 

Voltaire's 'Universal History was a favourite book of Walpole' s. He 
thought it Voltaire's chef-d'oeuvre. " It is a marvellous mass both of 
genius and sagacity, and the quintessence of political wisdom as well as 
of history. Any one chapter on a single reign, as those of Philip II., 
Henry IV., Richelieu, Elizabeth, Cromwell, is a complete picture of 
their characters and of their times. Whatever may be said of his 
incorrectness in some facts, his observations and inferences are always 

just and profound The story of the whole modern world is 

comprised in less space than that of the three centuries of diminutive 
Greece in the tedious travels of Anacharsis, who makes you remember 
rather than reflect" 



14 




THE DEUCALIONAL DELUGE. 

EUCALION, in Grecian legend, is the person specially 
saved at the general deluge ; and he is the father of Hellen, 
the great eponym of the Hellenic race. The enormous 
iniquity, as Apollodorus says, of the then existing brazen 
race, or, as others say, of the fifty monstrous sons of Lycaon — 
provoked Zeus to send a general deluge. An unremitting and ter- 
rible rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest 
mountain tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deucalion was 
saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father, 
Prometheus, to construct. After floating for nine days on the water, 
he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. He then 
prayed that men and companions might be sent to him in his solitude, 
when Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha, his wife, to cast stones over 
their heads : those cast by Pyrrha became woman, those by Deucalion 
men. And thus " the stony race of men came to tenant the soil of 
Greece." 

The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the his- 
torical ages of Greece : the chronologers, reckoning up by genealogies, 
assigned the exact date to it, and placed it at the same time as the con- 
flagration of the world, by the rashness of Phaeton. The meteoro- 
logical work ascribed to Aristotle, places Mount Pindus near Dodona, 
and the river Achelous : he treats it as a physical phenomenon, the re- 
sult of periodical cycles in the atmosphere, thus departing from the re- 
ligious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment 
inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this 
event were in circulation throughout Greece to a very late date. The 
Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a 
local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty summit of 
their mountain Geranei, which had not been completely submerged ; 
and in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus, at Athens (ac- 
cording to the Parian marble, founded by Deucalion), a cavity in the 
earth was shown, through which it was affirmed the waters of the 
deluge had retired: even in the time of Pausanias, the priests poured 
into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey. — Abridged from 
Gratis Hut. Greece, vol. i. 



EGYPT : ITS MONUMENTS AND HISTORY. 

Egypt has been under many dynasties, none of which sprang originally 
from her own soil. Indeed, to those who take pleasure in observing 
historical retribution, it must be a striking reflection that this country 



PLATO SOLD AS A SLAVE. 



*5 



has been subject to foreign powers, or to dominant races unassimilated 
with the original stock, ever since the days of those mighty kings who 
were wont from time to time tea oppress the children of Israel. It is 
true that subjection to a foreign race has become the normal condition 
of many Eastern countries:, but there is, perhaps, no region in which 
ancient splendour and long- -continued modern degradation are so harshly 
contrasted as in the land of the Pharaohs. — (Athenaum?) Canon Trevor 
puts this strikingly: — 

" It is hardly possible to imagine a greater contrast than is presented 
between the Monuments and the History of Egypt. The monuments 
tell of a native monarchy flourishing among the great empires of the 
East ; its kings little less than demi-gods ; its priesthood endued with a 
sanctity revered in distant lands ; its chariots and horses pouring out to 
battle under the banners of a thousand gods; the nations of the earth 
bringing tribute; and art and luxury carried to an extent only possible 
to a numer ous population, with abundant material resources and a high 
mental development. On the date and duration of this splendid period 
the momuments are dumb. They witness what Ancient Egypt was ; 
they kn ow nothing of her rise, progress, or decay. Their testimony 
is confirmed by the position of Egypt in the Holy Scriptures, where 
her rvders are found showing hospitality to the father of the faithful, or 
reducing his descendants into bondage. Still, we only know that 
Eg,ypt was a great power before Israel was a nation^ It gleams out of 
a remote antiquity with a splendour that cannot be denied ; but the 
•splendour is a pre-historic memory, separated from authentic chrono- 
logy by a gulf, which nothing but the Bible can span. All that we 
know of it is, that it existed before Moses, and perished about the close 
of the Old Testament. With the first page of secular history Ancient 
Egypt is already dead. The Pharaohs have become a tradition, the 
temples and altars are shrouded in mystery, the fleets and armies have 
disappeared, the people are reduced to inexorable servitude." 



PLATO SOLD AS A SLAVE. 

When Dionysius received, at Syracuse, the visit of Plato (who came 
to Sicily to see Mount Etna, 388 B.C.), he discoursed eloquently upon 
justice and virtue, enforcing his doctrine that wicked men were in- 
evitably miserable, that true happiness belonged only to the virtuous, 
and that despots could not lay claim to the merit of courage. This 
pleased not Dionysius, who took a deep-rooted dislike to Plato, whom, 
according to Diodorus, the despot caused to be seized, taken to the 
Syracusan slave-market, and put up for sale as a slave, at the price 
of twenty minae ; which his friends subscribed to pay, and thus re- 
leased him. Plato then left Syracuse in a trireme which was about to 
convey home the Lacedaemonian envoy, Pollio. But Dionysius secretly- 
entreated Pollio to cause him to be slain on the voyage — or at least to 
sell him as a slave. Plato was accordingly landed at iEgina, and there 



16 HOW DEMOSTHEMKS BECAME AN ORATOR. 



sold; but, being re-purchased, he w/as sent back to Athens: but it is 
certain that Plato was really sold, and i became for a moment a slave ! — 
Abridged from Grotes Hist. Greece, vol. *.xi. 



HOW DEMOSTHENES BECAME ,AN ORATOR. 

Demosthenes, when a youth, corrected his affective elocution by 
speaking with pebbles in his mouth ; he prepared . himself to overcome 
■ the noise of the assembly by declaiming in stormy \ veather on the sea- 
shore of the Phalerum ; he opened his lungs by runming, and extended 
the power of holding breath by pronouncing sentences in marching up- 
hill ; he sometimes passed two or three months without interruption in 
a subterranean chamber, practising night and day, either mi composition 
or declamation, and shaving one-half of his beard in order t.o disqualify 
himself from going abroad. In his unremitting private practice, he ac- 
\ quired a graceful action by keeping watch on all his moveme its while 
[ declaiming before a tall looking-glass. More details are j. -iven by 
I Plutarch, from Demetrius, the Phalerean, who heard them himse T from 
Demosthenes ; and the subterranean chamber where he practise^ i was 
shown at Athens, even in the time of Plutarch. 



THE HOMERIC POEMS. 

Mr. Froude, the historian, loves Homeric masterpieces ; and he has 
traced with a fine and cunning hand the moral creed of the great poet, 
the state of society described by him, the power and grand simplicity of 
his manner, his sympathy with what is noble and beautiful. We quote 
his very striking reflections on the moral differences between the Iliad 
and Odyssey: 

" In the Iliad, in spite of the gloom of Achilles, and his complaint 
of the double urn, the sense of life, on the whole, is sunny and cheer- 
ful. There is no yearning for anything beyond — nothing vague, no- 
thing mystical. The earth, the men, the gods, have all a palpable reality 
about them. From first to last, we know where we are, and what we 
are about. In the Odyssey, we are breathing another atmosphere. The 
speculations on the moral mysteries of our being hang like a mist over us 
from the beginning to the end, and the cloud, from time to time, de- 
scends on the actors, and envelopes them in a preternatural halo. . . 
We never know as we go on, so fast we pass from one to the 
other, when we are among mere human beings, and when among the 
spiritual and mystical. Those sea-nymphs, those cannibals, those en- 
chantresses, if intended to be real, are neither mortal nor divine ; at any 
rate, like nothing divine which we had seen in Olympus or on the plains 
of Ilium ; and at times there is a strangeness seen in the hero himself. 
Sometimes it is Ulysses painfully toiling his way home across the un- 
known ocean ; sometimes it is we that are Ulysses, and that unknown 
ocean is the life across which we are wandering with too many Circes 



HOMERS BATTLES, AND HIS IMITATORS. 17 

and Sirens, and Isles of Error in our path. In the same spirit death is 
no longer the end, and on every side long vistas seem to stretch away into 
the infinite, peopled with shadowy forms." 

The candour and integrity of Homer, in an historical point of view, 
have been so impugned as to be set beneath the authority of Geoffrey 
of Monmouth. One of the latest Homeric theories is that by 
Mr. James Hutchinson, of Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, who 
points out remarkable resemblances in the Iliad of Homer and the 
Ramayana of Valmiki. He contends that the rape of Helen and 
the siege of Troy are really but the carrying off of Sita and the 
capture of Lanka done into Greek verse. He goes further, and as- 
serts his conviction that Homer not only worshipped the same deities as 
the Hindus, but was himself a Hindu. 

Dr. August Jacob, after six years' study of the ancient Greek epics, 
has constructed a theory of Homer, according to which there was 
really a singer, or bard, named Homer, who, somewhere about the tenth 
century B.C., flourished on the western coast of Asia Minor, or in the 
islands hard by. The wrath of Achilles, and the return of Odysseus, 
formed the subjects of his songs, which, for a long time, were not 
written down, but preserved by oral tradition. But Homer had pre- 
decessors, contemporaries, and successors, who celebrated the fall of 
Troy. All the lays, Homeric and others, were altered from time to 
time; and were edited by Pisistratus, who presented them to the 
Athenians in thesame order in which they now appear. Dr. Jacob points 
out the ancient son£ or stories, examines the whole of the Iliad and 
Odyssey book by book, and makes his citations in German. 



HOMER S BATTLES, AND HIS IMITATORS. 

The first great poet whose works have come down to us sang of war 
long before war became a science or a trade. If, in his time, there was 
enmity between two little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of 
citizens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with implements of labour 
rudely turned into weapons. On each side appeared conspicuous a few 
chiefs, whose wealth had enabled them to procure good armour, horses, 
and chariots, and whose leisure had enabled them to practise military ex- 
ercises. One such chief, if he were a man of great strength, agility, and 
courage, would, probably, be more formidable than twenty common 
men ; and the force and dexterity with which he flung his spear might have 
no inconsiderable share in deciding the event of the day. Such were, 
probably, the Battles with which Homer was familiar. But Homer re- 
lated the actions of men of a former generation, of men who sprang 
from the gods, and communed with the Gods face to face, one of whom 
could with ease hurl rocks, which two sturdy hinds of a later period 
would be unable even to lift. He therefore naturally represented their 
martial exploits as resembling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, 
those of the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age ! 
Achilles, clad in celestial armour, drawn by celestial coursers, grasping 

c 



tS fabulous classic localities. 

nis spear which none but himself could raise, driving all Troy and Lyc : a 
before him, and choking the Scamander with dead, was only a magnificent 
exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, fearless, accustomed to the 
use of weapons, guarded by a shield and helmet of the best Sidonian 
fabric, and whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, struck down 
with his right arm, foe after foe. In all rude societies, similar notions are 
found. There are at this day countries where the Life-guardsman, 
Shaw, would be considered as a much greater warrior than the Duke of 
Wellington. Buonaparte loved to describe the astonishment with which 
the Mamelukes looked at his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distin- 
guished above all his fellows by his bodily strength, and by the skill with 
which he managed his horse and his sabre ; could not believe that a man 
who was scarcely five feet high, and rode like a butcher, could be the 
greatest soldier in Europe. 

Homer's description of war had, therefore, as much truth as poetry 
requires. But truth was altogether wanting to the performances of those 
who, writing about battles which had scarcely anything in common with 
the battles of his times, servilely imitated his manner. The folly of Silius 
Italicus, in particular, is positively nauseous. He undertook to record in 
verse the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of the first 
order ; and his narrative is made up of the hideous wounds which these 
generals inflicted with their own hands. Asdrubal flings a spear which 
grazes the shoulder of the consul Nero ; but Nero sends his spear into 
Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris and Butes and Maris and Arst- 
and the long-haired Adherbes, and the gigant'c Thylis, and Sapharu . 
and Monassus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs Perusinus 
through the groin with a stake, and breaks the backbone of Telesinus with 
a huge stone. This detestable fashion was copied in modern times, and 
continued to prevail down to the age of Addison. Several versifiers had 
described William turning thousands to flight by his single prowess, and 
dyeing the Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as John 
Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, represented Marlborough as 
having w T on the battle of Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and 
skill in fence. — Macaulay. 



FABULOUS LOCALITIES OF CLASSIC HISTORY. 

Mr. Grote, at the opening of his valuable History of Greece, gives this 
very interesting precis of certain classic localities, the existence of which 
has been disproved by the extension of geographical discovery : — 

" Many of these fabulous localities are to be found in Homer and 
Hesiod, and the other Greek poets and topographers, — Erytheia, the 
garden of the Hesperides, the garden of Phcebus, to which Boreas trans 
ported the Attic maiden Orithya, the delicious country of the Hyper- 
boreans, the Elysian plain, the floating island of jEoIus, Trinakria, the 
country of the ^Ethiopians, the Losstrygones, the Cyclopes, the Loto- 
phagi, the Sirens, the Cimmerians, and the Gorgons, &c. These are 
places which (to use the expression of Pindar respecting the Hyperbo- 



GREEK A NEW LANGUAGE] 19 

reans) you cannot approach either by sea or by land : the wings of the 

poet alone can bring you there 

"In the present advanced state of geographical knowledge, the story of 
that man who, after reading Gullivers Travels, went to look in his map 
for Lilliput, appears an absurdity ; but those who fixed the exact locality 
of the floating island of iEolus on the rocks of the Sirens did much the 
same ; and with their ignorance of geography and imperfect appreciation 
of historical evidence, the error was hardly to be avoided. The ancient 
belief which fixed the Sirens on the island of Sireneuse off the coast of 
Naples; the Cyclopes, Erytheia, and the Laestrygones in Sicily; the 
Lotophagi on the island of Meninx, near the Lesser Syrtis ; the Phasa- 
cians at Corcyra, and the goddess Circe at the promontory of Circeium, 
took its rise at a time when these regions were first Hellenized, and com- 
paratively little visited." 



COLOSSAL ANTS PRODUCING GOLD. 

This extravagant fable is related by the Greeks, and repeated by tra- 
vellers of the Middle Ages, of ants as big as foxes producing gold. Thr 
passage states that the tribes who dwell between the Mem and Mandau 
mountains brought lumps of the paipilika, or ant-gold, — so named be- 
cause it was dug out by the common large ant, or paipilika. Professor 
Wilson explains this absurdity, by observing that it was believed that the 
native gold found on the surface of some of the auriferous deserts of 
Northern India had been laid bare by the action of these insects, — an idea 
by no means irrational, although erroneous, but which grew up, in its 
progress westward, into a monstrous fable. The native country of these 
tribes is that described by the Greeks — the mountains between Hindostan 
and Thibet ; and the names are those of barbarous races still found there. 



GREEK A NEW LANGUAGE ! 

In the Quarterly Review, vol. xxxix. p. 477, we are told that Conrad, 
a monk of Heresbach, had pronounced, in presence of an assembly, an 
anathema against Greek, saying that " a new language had been dis- 
covered, called Greek, against which it was necessary to guard, as this 
language engendered every species of heresy ; just as all they who learned 
Hebrew infallibly became Jews." 

M. Delepierre, in correction, says : — " The real fact is, that Conrad of 
Heresbach had never been a monk, but was a confidential councillor of the 
Duke of Cleves, and that, far from prohibiting the study of the ancient 
languages, he was one of the savans of the sixteenth century who showed 
the greatest zeal in encouraging a taste for their culture. It is he him- 
self who, in order to expose the ignorance of the clergy of that period, 
relates that he heard a monk from the pulpit pronounce the anathema on 
the Greek language mentioned above. So easy is it, by distorting facts, 
to make or mar a reputation 1" — Historical Difficulties, 1S6S, pp. 5, 6. 

C 2 



20 THE BA TTLE OF ARBELA. 



THE DEATH OF AESCHYLUS. 

iEschylus, the celebrated Athenian tragic poet, spent the latter part of 
his life in Sicily, where he died. For this change of residence, at an ad- 
vanced period of life, no certain reason has been transmitted by ancient 
authors. It has been recorded that a prophet informed him of the day 
on which he would be killed by something falling upon his head ; and, in 
order to avoid an accident of that kind, he quitted the town, and retired 
to the fields, where an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head, probably 
mistaking it for a stone, as he was very bald. This stroke instantly de- 
prived the poet of life. Pliny and Valerius Maximus narrate the account 
of the death of iEschylus with all the gravity of truth; and, however 
improbable it may appear, there can be little doubt but both believed in 
the accuracy of what they stated. Plutarch has, in his writings, men- 
tioned a number of particulars of the life of TEschylus, which would re- 
auire to be confirmed by other testimony before they are admitted as 
authentic history. 



THE BATTLE OF ARBELA. 

Mr. Rawlinson, in the closing volume of his Five Great Monarchies of 
the Eastern World, makes the following remarks on the battle of Arbela, 
and its effects on the Persian Empire : — 

" Arbela was not, like Issus, won by mere fighting. It was the 
leader's victory, rather than the soldiers'. Alexander's diagonal advance, 
the confusion which it caused, the break in the Persian line, and its 
prompt occupation by some of the best cavalry and a portion of the 
phalanx, are the turning-points of the engagement. All the rest followed 
as a matter of course. Far too much importance has been assigned to 
Darius's flight, which was the effect rather than the cause of victory. 
When the centre of an Asiatic army is so deeply penetrated that the per- 
son of the monarch is exposed and his near attendants begin to fall, the 
battle is won. Darius did not — indeed, he could not — ' set the example 
of flight.' Hemmed in by vast masses of troops, it was not until their 
falling away from him on his left flank at once exposed him to the enemy 
and gave him room to escape, that he could extricate himself from the 
melee. No doubt it would have been nobler, finer, more heroic, had the 
Persian monarch, seeing that all was lost, and that the Empire of the Per- 
sians was over, resolved not to outlive the independence of his country. 
Had he died in the thick of the fight, a halo of glory would have sur- 
rounded him. But because he lacked, in common with many other great 
kings and commanders, the quality of heroism, we are not justified in 
affixing to his memory the stigma of personal cowardice. Like Pompey, 
like Napoleon, he yielded in the crisis of his fate to the instinct of self- 
preservation. He fled from the field where he had lost his crown, not to 
organize a new army, not to renew the contest, but to prolong for a few 
weeks a life which had ceased to have any public value. It is needless 
to pursue further the dissolution of the Empire. The fatal blow was 
struck at Arbela — all the rest was but the long death-agony. At Arbela 



ALEXANDER'S HORSE BUCEPHALUS. 21 

the crown of Cyrus passed to the Macedonian ; the Fifth Monarchy- 
came to an end. The he-goat, with the notable horn between hi? 
eyes, had come from the west to the ram which had two horns, and 
had run into him with the fury of his power. He had come close to 
him, and, moved with choler, had smitten the ram, and broken his two 
horns — there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he had 
cast him down to the ground and stamped upon him — and there was 
none to deliver the ram out of his hand."* 



ALEXANDER THE GREAT, AND HIS HORSE 
BUCEPHALUS. 

The fame of Alexander and his steed, Bucephalus, are built up 
together. The latter was named from his head resembling that of an 
ox. Alexander was the first to break in this famous horse, and thus 
fulfil the condition stated by an oracle as necessary for gaining the crown 
of Macedon. Aulus Gelliusf has given a minute account of Bucephalus, 
and records that, after he had been killed in battle, Alexander builtj in 
honour of his horse, a city in India, which, from him, he called 
Bucephale. To this day, the burial-place of Bucephalus is pointed out 
by the natives, and the tomb erected to his memory by Alexander stands 
in the centre of a large plain, between Jelam and Chenab rivers, in the 
Punjab. It is formed of earth, breasted with marble ; the base extends 
100 paces, and diminishes at the top to thirty, to which you ascend by 
a flight of stone steps, fifty-five in number. In the centre, at the top, 
which is quite flat, is a square draw-well, faced with stone ; a tree grows 
a few yards from the mouth of the well, and under its shade sits a 
faquier (a monk or mendicant). We gather these details from the letter 
of an officer of the 4 1 st Regiment, who was, a few years since, encamped 
close to the tomb in his campaign. 



* Le Brim has painted the Battle of Arbela, which we remember to have seen 
engraved upon a glass vase, by a Bohemian artist : as a modern intaglio en- 
graving, this vase was unrivalled. It was long in the possession of Mr. Apsley 
Pellatt, who has engraved it in his Curiosities of Glass-making, 1849. 

f Aulus Gellius (or, according to some writers, Agellius), the author of the 
Nodes Atticce, was born at Rome, early in the second century, and died at the 
beginning of the reign of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Nodes Atticce 
was written, as he informs us in the preface to the work, during the winter 
evenings in Attica, to amuse his children in their hours of relaxation. It appears 
from his own account, that he had been accustomed to keep a commonplace 
book, in which he entered whatever he heard in conversation, or met with in his 
private reading that appeared worthy of memory. There is no attempt at classi- 
fication or arrangement in the work, which contains anecdotes and arguments, 
scraps of history and pieces of poetry, and dissertations on various points, its 
philosophy, geometry, and grammar. Amidst much that is trifling and puerile, 
we obtain information upon many subjects relating to antiquity, of which we 
must otherwise have been ignorant. The work was printed for the first time at 
Rome in 1469 ; it was translated into English by Beloe, 1795. 



22 HERODOTUS. 



The name Bucephalus has been applied to a beautiful animal of 
the gazelle tribe, as well as generally to a showy steed. Sheridan, 
in his Prologue to Pizarro, sings of the Sunday equestrian in Hyde 
Park:— 

Anxious — yet timorous too ! — his steed to show, 

The hack Bucephalus of Rotten Row. 



HERODOTUS, THE FATHER OF HISTORY. 

Herodotus, the author of the most ancient history which has been 
transmitted to modern times, was born at Halicarnassus about 484 B.C. 
If the passages in his own History (i. 30, iii. 15) were written by himself, 
he was probably alive 408 B.C. To obtain authentic and abundant 
materials for writing his History, he visited Asia, spent some time in 
Egypt, crossed to Greece, and afterwards to Italy. To the Egyptian 
priests he, probably, owed the greatest obligations. He presents himsef 
as a traveller and observer, and as an historian. The story of his reading 
his work at the Olympic Games has been disproved, and is not even 
alluded to by Plutarch, in his Treatise on the malignity of Herodotus. 
He makes no display of the extent of his travels ; but his details are sur- 
prising: he describes an object as standing behind the door, or on the 
right hand, as you enter a temple ; or he was told something by a per- 
son in a particular place; or he uses other words equally significant. 
The sketches of the various people and countries are among the most 
valuable parts of the work of Herodotus, throwing a clear and steady 
light over ancient history. When he has any doubt about the authenticity 
of his information, Herodotus always uses qualifying expressions ; but 
his statements made without doubt or hesitation may be relied on. His 
digressions elevate him to the rank of an intelligent traveller, who com- 
bines in harmonious union with a great historical work, designed to per- 
petuate the glories of his own nation, so endless a variety of matter collected 
from the general history of mankind. He chose for his subjects a series of 
events which concerned the universal Greek nation, and not them only, but 
the whole civilized world ; and by his execution of his great undertaking, 
he was called by Cicero the Father of History. He was not fully appreci- 
ated by all his countrymen ; and in modern times his wonderful stories have 
been the subject of merriment to the half-learned, who measure his ex- 
perience by their own ignorance. The incidental confirmations of his 
veracity have been accumulating of late years on all sides, and our more 
exact knowledge of the countries which he visited enable us to appreciate 
him better than many of the Greeks themselves could do. His style is 
simple, pleasing, and generally perspicuous ; but with evident marks of 
defective composition. 

Forty years ago, it was remarked in the Edinburgh Review: — 
" Few persons are aware how often they imitate the Father of History. 
Thus, children and servants are remarkably 'Herodotean' in their style 
of narration. They tell everything dramatically. Their ' says hes ' and 



HERODOTUS. 



23 



■ says shes ' are proverbial. Every person who has had to settle their 
disputes, knows that, even when they have no intention to deceive, then- 
reports of conversation always require to be carefully sifted. If an 
educated man were giving an account of a certain change of administra- 
tion, he would say: 'Lord John Russell resigned, and the Queen, in 
consequence, sent for Sir Robert Peel.' A porter would tell the story as 
if he had been behind the curtains of the Royal be A at Buckingham 
Palace. ' So Lord John Russell says, " I cannot manage this business, I 
must go out." So the Queen says, " Well, then, I must send for Sir Robert 
Peel, that's all." This is the very manner of the Father of History. 

" Herodotus has been most unblushingly mis-quoted, by great men, 
too : Denon, the traveller in Egypt, several times quotes Herodotus for 
what is not in that author. But this is so common even with people who 
have claims to scholarship, that it has become almost a fashion to say that 
anything is in Herodotus." 

In a review of Wheeler's Geography of Herodotus, in the Literary 
Gazette, 1854, we find this summary of his present status : — 

" The fame of Herodotus brightens as time advances. After all the 
assaults upon his veracity as a traveller and his credibility as a historian, 
the substantial truth and value of his writings are more and more acknow- 
ledged. The researches of the most learned scholars and the discoveries 
of the most recent travellers are ever bringing to light new proofs of the 
authenticity of his narrative. That he admitted into his history many 
doubtful traditions, and that along with the record of what he himself 
saw he gave many idle tales related to him by others, is understood by 
every reader. But the historian himself made no pretension to an exact 
and systematic narrative of events. His work was intended not for 
philosophical but for popular use, and he set down all that he thought 
might prove generally interesting. Sometimes he warns his readers 
against receiving his statements as facts, as in the account of the clerk of 
the temple at Elephantina, when, recording the reply to his inquiry about 
the course of the Nile, he adds, ' the man, however, seemed to me to be 
jesting.' He frankly tells the sources of his information, and makes no 
concealment of his being frequently a mere compiler and reporter of 
tales, as well as an eyewitness and narrator of events. For the purposes 
of his work, he did not think it necessary to exercise the strict discrimina- 
tion between fact and fiction which is now expected in every historian. 
It is not fair, therefore, to judge him accord ng to the ideas of modern 
criticism, as has been done by the commentator on Herodotus, Mr. 
Biakesley, in the introduction to the recently published edition of his his- 
tory. He repeats the old charge, that much of the narrative of ' the 
Father of History ' is a mere bundle of stories, imposed upon his credulity 
by ' Egyptian priests ' and 'ancient mariners;' and he even renews the 
discussion as to whether Herodotus really did accomplish those travels 
which have been generally ascribed to him. The criticisms and argu- 
ments of the learned commentator may serve to induce increased caution 
and discrimination in regard to the details of the writings of Hero- 
dotus, but we do not think they injure his general reputation either as a 
historian or as a geographer. Notwithstanding Mr. Blakesley's seep- 



24 



DIOGENES: HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. 



ticism, and that of all previous critics, from Plutarch to Voltaire, we still 
turn with confidence to the pages of the old < Homer of History be- 
lieving that there we find much true and valuable information as to the 
nations of antiquity which no other work contains, and that we there 
Save a rtrikingV on the whole, a faithful picture of the ancient world 
as it appeared to a Greek traveller five centuries before the Christian era. 

DIOGENES: HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. 
Diogenes was a native of Sinope, in Pontus, which he and his father, 
who was a banker, were compelled to quit, for coining false money. 
On settling at Athens, he studied philosophy under Antisthenes. b rom 
his writings being lost, the extent of his information and his discoveries 
in science are unknown. That he had the reputation of being a great 
genius seems undeniable ; although much of his celebrity -may be referred 
to the strictness of his tenets, contempt of comfort, and oddity of manner. 
It must not be inferred that because he despised riches he cultivated 
humility: on the contrary, he looked down with scorn upon the whole 
world censured with the dignity of a magistrate all mankind, and con- 
sidered every philosopher as greatly his inferior Extreme poverty the 
result of his despising riches, obliged him to beg-a state to which his 
raiment was not superior ; yet, when Alexander the Great offered him 
Sto hTSurned at the proposal, and said, « All I ask is do not stand 
between me and the sun/ In after-life, Diogenes was taken by pirates 
who carried him into Crete, and sold him to Xeniades, a Corinthian m 
whose family he lived as tutor, and refused to be ransomed by Ins friends 
giving as a reason, that " a lion was not the servant of his feeders, but 
their master." He died in the same year, and, according to one account 
on the same day, with Alexander the Great (323 B.C.), at the age of 
ninety years. Of him Plato may be said to have given a just 
character in a few words, that "he was Socrates run mad His dress 
was a coarse double robe, which served him as a cloak by day and a 
coverlet by night, and carried a wallet to receive alms of food. His 
abode was a cask in the temple of Cybele. In the summer he rolled 
himself upon the burning sand, and in the winter clung to the images in 
ttesteeet covered with snow, in order that he might accustom himself 
to endure all kinds of weather. 

The smart things and witty repartees of Diogenes were collected by 
his kinsman, Diogenes Laertius ; and of them Professor de Morgan has, 
in the Athenaum, collected some specimens. 

"Diogenes is not a Cynic : that is a name for the snapping school which 
he raised into fame, nominally founded by Antisthenes He is as much 
more than a Cynic as Plato is more than a Platonist. 'lam Alex- 
ander the great king.-And I am Diogenes the Dog (kvov). The 
school frequented the Cynosargus at Athens ; whence some thought 
The name was derived. Very likely ; and in thisway : dirty mendicants 
hunting a place so called would be called dogs, and philosopnic pride 
would adopt the name. 



DIOGENES: HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. 2$ 

" Diogenes, like R. B. Sheridan, must have every stray joke sworn to 
him. But the genuine stock is in Laertius. He was asked why gold is 
so pale, and he replied, Because so many are lying in wait for it. Very 
likely the querist expected Diogenes to answer that he did not know, 
and would then have answered his own question with — Because it is 
afraid you and your father will put a wrong stamp on it. For Icesias 
and Son were bankers at Sinope, and were driven away for operations 
on the coinage. When Diogenes was afterwards reproached with this, 
his answer was— I was once what you are now ; what I am now you 
never will be. 

" When should a man dine ? If rich, said Diogenes, when he likes ; if 
poor, when he can. 

" Why, said some one, who wanted to be very smart upon the poor 
tub-tenant who lived by his wit, do people give cheerfully to the lame and 
blind, but not to philosophers ? Because said Diogenes, people feel they 
may (e\7ri(ovcn) become lame and blind themselves, but they have no 
fear of becoming philosophers. He begged of a stingy man who was 
very slow about producing anything: My friend ! said he, what I ask 
for is to feed me, not to bury me. 

" The well-known house, or bed, in which the sage lived — when at 
Athens, at least ; no doubt Xeniades found him a better lodging — has 
produced a comparison. Granger said that the large hoop-apparatus 
which the ladies wore in hi da/ was no more a petticoat than Diogenes's 
tub was his breeches. W ould they now let Diogenes, tuo and all, into 
an omnibus ? 

" The humility of Diogenes was of that kind which is ' aped by pride,' 
and is, perhaps, the best understood point of his enigmatical character. 
It did not impose upon Plato, whose repartee is equally well known. 
Byron embodies it in one of the stanzas of Don Juan : — 

Trampling on Plato's pride, with greater pride, 

As did the cynic on some like occasion : 
Deeming the sage would be much mortified, 

Or thrown into a philosophic passion, 
For a spoilt carpet— but the ' ' Attic bee 
Was much consoled by his own repartee. " 

The same idea is illustrated in a different way by Sir Thomas Browne: 
" Diogenes I hold to be the most vain inglorious man of his time, and 
more ambitious in refusing all honours than Alexander in rejecting 
none." — Religio Medici. 

The tub story has been demolished : " And why ?" says De Morgan. 
"Because it is not mentioned by Cicero, Plutarch, Arrian, and Valerius 
Maximus ; only by Lucian, Laertius, Juvenal, and Seneca." 

Diogenes desired to be buried head downwards, feeling sure, he said, 
that things would soon be topsy-turvy : this was an allusion to the 
growth of Macedonia. Diogenes was imitated by the eccentric 
Major Labelliere, who was buried on the most north-western brow of 
Box Hill, in Surrey, with his head downwards, in order, he said, that 
" as the world was turned topsy-turvy, it was fit he should be buried so, 
that he might be right at last." 



THE PLAINS OF TROY. 



XERXES AND HIS EXPLOITS. 

Ancisit authors differ respecting the number of the army under 
Xerxes in his invasion of Greece. Justinus makes it consist of 700,000 
native troops and 300,000 auxiliaries, adding that it had not been im- 
properly recorded that rivers had been drunk up by his armies, and that 
his fleet consisted of 14,000 ships. That historian says: "His army 
wanted a commander : that, in considering the king, you may praise his 
wealth, but see him as a general : that he was first in flight, last in war, 
timid in perils, and puffed up when not in personal danger. Before he 
made trial of war, from confidence of his strength, he seemed the lord of 
nature itself, levelled mountains, filled up valleys, covered certain seas 
with bridges, and contributed to the advantage of navigation by the 
invention of shorter methods. His entrance into Greece was as terrible 
as his retreat was dishonourable. When he came down upon Greece, 
Leonidas, with 4000 men, guarded the Straits of Thermopylse for three 
days against the whole army of Xerxes, and would probably have success- 
fully repelled the invaders (though, according to Diodorus, there were at 
least 7000, or even 12,000, if we may believe Pausanias), had not the 
enemy, by the treachery of a Grecian, been conducted to the top of a 
hill which overhangs the pass. The obstinate bravery of Leonidas and 
his men had nearly proved fatal to the king himself, who, in his retreat, 
crossed the Hellespont in a fishing-boat, traversing the space in thirty 
days, and returned to Persia ; traversing a space in thirty days over 
which it took six months to march with his army. Such mortality 
prevailed among the troops who accompanied him, that the birds of prey 
marked his track, and feasted on the bodies of the Persians. Before the 
naval engagement, Xerxes sent 4000 armed men to plunder Delphi, who 
fell by showers and lightning. He made war a second time on Greece, 
and was defeated by Cimon, son of Miltiades, both by land and sea. 
These unsuccessful attacks on Greece rendered Xerxes contemptible in 
the eyes of his own subjects ; and Artabanus, his prefect, put him to 
death, in order to procure the crown for himself. 






THE PLAINS OF TROY. 

The histories of the Troad and the city of Troy are either mythical or 
entirely lost to us. Of the latter, although it was one of the most 
celebrated cities of antiquity, its site has been the subject of much dis- 
cussion in modem times by travellers and antiquaries. Some have 
denied the existence of ancient Troy altogether, or have declared it to be 
a useless task to investigate its site, since it was totally destroyed by the 
Greeks, and abandoned by its inhabitants. But this last opinion is too 
sweeping ; since, although Troy may have been destroyed by the Greeks, 
Homer, who cannot have been mistaken on this point, clearly suggests, 
and is borne out by Strabo, that after the calamity that befel Troy in the 
reign of Priam, it continued, at least for some time, to be ruled over by 
the iEneadae, a branch of the house of Priam. The city of Troy, wnich 



SOLIMAN " THE MAGNIFICENT." 27 

Xerxes (Herodotus) and afterwards Alexander the Great visited, may- 
have been of later origin, but it is nevertheless attested that it was built 
on the site of the ancient Troy. This town gradually decayed after 
the time of Alexander, and a new town of the same name was built, 
which the Romans regarded and treated as the genuine ancient Troy, 
from which they derived their descent. 

After a siege of nine years, the Greeks took and destroyed the city of 
Troy, about the year 11 84 B.C. Thenceforth, the history of Troy, 
which, until then, is thoroughly mythical, is completely lost to us ; 
although, as indicated above, it must have continued for a considerable 
time afterwards. At the time of the Trojan war, the inhabitants of the 
Troad had reached a higher state of prosperity than their opponents, 
the Achseans. There seems, however, to have been no considerable town 
in the district, except the capital, Ilium or Troy : the cities mentioned 
by Homer would seem, from the ease with which they were taken, to 
have been nothing more than villages. 

The strength and resources of Troy baffled the united efforts of all 
Greece for nine years. Catullus has beautifully described the enormous 
carnage of its bloody siege in a single line : — " Iniquitous Troy, the 
common grave of Europe and Asia." The Trojan walls were built by 
Neptune and Apollo for a certain sum, which they were to receive from 
Laomedon, but out of which he defrauded them. 

Webster, who visited the plains of Troy in T830, describes them as 
now barren and desolate. The classic Scamander is but a muddy stream, 
winding through an uncultivated plain, covered with stunted oaks, 
underwood, and rushes. At the opposite extremity of the plain, stood 
the tombs of Hector and Achilles ; that of the latter near the Helles- 
pont, where the Greek fleet was moored. Near is the grave of his 
friend Patroclus. Thus, Athenian glories are now reduced to a few 
tumuli about thirty feet high. 



SOLIMAN "THE MAGNIFICENT. 7 

Here is a specimen of the barbarity with which this historical 
butcher treated his fellow-creatures : — 

Among the many distinctions of Soliman's reign must be noticed the 
increased diplomatic intercourse with European nations. Three years 
after the capture of Rhodes appeared the first French ambassador at the 
Ottoman Porte : he received a robe of honour, a present of two hundred 
ducats, and, what was more to his purpose, a promise of a campaign in 
Hungary, which should engage on that side the army of Charles and 
his brother, Ferdinand. Soliman kept his promise. At the head of 
100,000 men and 300 pieces of artillery, he commenced this memorable 
campaign. On the fatal field of Mohacs the fate of Hungary was 
decided, in the year 1526, in an unequal fight. Louis II., as he fled from 
the Turkish sabres, was drowned in a morass. The next day the Sultan 
received in state the compliments of his officers. The heads of 20co of 
the slain, including those of seven bishops, and many of the nobiiity, 



28 HIS TOR Y OF EARL Y ROME. 

were piled up as a trophy before his tent. Seven days after the battle 
a tumultuous cry arose in the camp to massacre the prisoners and 
peasants, and, in consequence, 10,000 men were put to the sword. The 
keys of Buda were sent to the conqueror, who celebrated the feast of 
Bairam in the Castle of the Hungarian Kings. Fourteen days after- 
wards he began to retire, bloodshed and devastation marking the course 
of his army. To Maroth, belonging to the Bishop of Gran, many 
thousands of the people had fled with their property, relying on the 
strength of the castle. The Turkish artillery, however, soon levelled it, 
and the wretched fugitives were indiscriminately butchered. No less 
than 25,000 fell here ; and the whole number ot the Hungarians de- 
stroyed in the barbarous warfare of this single campaign amounted to 
at least 200,000 souls. 



HISTORY OF EARLY ROME. 

The early history of Rome has undergone some strange ups and 
downs within the memory of man. A generation which is hardly yet 
extinct, believed it as it stood. Niebuhr taught us to disbelieve the old 
history; he gave a history of his own making to believe instead of it; 
though his statements too often rested not on any tangible evidence, but 
on a power of " divination" vested in Niebuhr himself. Much that 
Niebuhr had rejected, Mr. Newman believed. The last history of Rome, 
that of Mommsen, like Niebuhr's, pulls down and builds up, but never 
quotes authorities. Meanwhile, Sir George Cornewall Lewis assailed 
Niebuhr's whole system, scoffed at the power of divination, denied the 
right of any man to assert anything which he could not prove, and 
maintained that next to nothing could be proved as to the times 
embraced in the first Decade of Livy. Yet, Sir G. C. Lewis did net 
deny that many of the leading events in earlier times had a real historical 
groundwork ; and he only laid it down, that without contemporary evi- 
dence it is impossible to distinguish the truth from falsehood, while he 
did infinite service in utterly discrediting the wild notion of " divination," 
and in exposing the reckless dogmatism with which Niebuhr had im- 
posed upon the world statements unsupported by a shadow of evidence. 
The result of Sir G. C. Lewis's labours is, in effect, to wipe Niebuhr out 
altogether, and to leave the early books of Livy as a beautiful story, a 
sort of prose Iliad, which we may read and enjoy, without believing it. 
For history, he would send us to the later days of Rome ; to those 
mighty struggles with Hannibal and Philip, which have been so strangely 
neglected for myths about Romulus and Coriolanus. The one fact 
of early Roman history for which real contemporary evidence can be 
shown, is the fact that Rome was taken by the Gauls. Roman history, 
in the highest and fullest sense of the word, begins only with the war 
with Pyrrhus. Up to the invasion, all is chaos; all records have 
perished ; we can be sure of nothing. The political history of Rome, 
if we like to believe it, begins with Romulus and Tatius. Tha 
Romulus made a treaty with Tatius is in itself more credible than that 



THE CAPITOL SAVED BY GEESE. 29 

he was suckled by a wolf; but there is no more historical evidence for one 
story than the other. Except two or three notices of Polybius, we 
have nothing earlier than Livy and Dionysius, though they were but 
' copyists of copyists. — Selected and abridged from the Saturday Review. 



HOW THE CAPITOL OF ROME WAS SAVED BY THE 
CACKLING OF GEESE. 

The goose appears to have been much maligned by the moderns, who 
term it a "stupid bird," and even the trustworthiness of modern history 
" has been impeached in support of this imputation. Every one recollects 
the story in Livy of the geese of Juno saving the Roman Capitol. The 
historical credit of this story depends in great measure upon the 
vigilant habits of the bird, and its superiority to the dog as a guardian. 

The alertness and watchfulness of the Wild Goose, which have made 
its chase proverbially difficult, appear, from the following testimony, to 
be characteristic of the bird in its domesticated state. The establish- 
ment of this fact we have in the following evidence, by Professor Owen, 
from Richmond Park: — 

" Opposite the cottage where I live is a pond, which is frequented 
during the summer by two brood-flocks of Geese belonging to the 
keepers. These geese take up their quarters for the night along the 
margin of the pond, into which they are ready to plunge at a moment's 
notice. Several times when I have been up late, or wakeful, I have 
heard the old gander sound the alarm, which is immediately taken up, 
and has been sometimes followed by a simultaneous plunge of the flock 
into the pool. On mentioning this to the keeper, he, quite aware of 
the characteristic readiness of the Geese to sound an alarm in the night, 
attributed it to a foumart, or other predatory vermin. On other occa- 
sions the cackling has seemed to be caused by a deer stalking near the 
flock. But often has the old Roman anecdote occurred to me, when I 
have been awoke by the midnight alarm-notes of my anserine neigh- 
bours ; and more than once I have noticed, when the cause of alarm 
has been such as to excite the dogs of the next-door keeper, that the 
Geese were beforehand in giving loud warning of the strange steps. 

" I have never had the smallest sympathy with the sceptics as to 
Livy's statement : it is not a likely one to be feigned ; it is in exact 
accordance with the characteristic acuteness of sight and hearing, watch- 
fulness and power, and instinct to utter alarm-cries, of the goose." 

The Gray Lag Goose, identical with the domestic goose of our farm- 
yards, is the Anser of the Romans — the same that saved the Capitol 
by its vigilance, and was cherished accordingly. Pliny (lib. x., c. xxii.) 
speaks of this bird at much length, stating how they were driven from 
a distance on foot to Rome ; he mentions the value of the feathers of 
the white ones, and relates that in some places they were plucked twice a 
year. In the Palazzo de Conservatory fifth room, are " two Ducks, in 
bronze, said to have been found in the Tarpeian Rock, and to be the re- 
presentation of those ducks which saved the Capitol." — Starke, 



30 ROME, THE MISTRESS OF THE WORLD. 

The liver of the goose seems to have been a favourite morsel with 
epicures in all ages, and their invention appears to have been active in 
exercising the means of increasing the volume of that organ. The pate 
defoie d'ote de Strasburg is not more in request now than were the great 
goose-livers in the time of the Romans. — See Pliny, Hist. lib. x. c. 22, 
&C. 

The Egyptian goose, which appears to be the Chelanopex of the Greeks, 
was much prized on account of its eggs, second only to those of the 
peacock, i^lian notices this bird, and speaks of its cunning. But it is 
Herodotus who draws our attention to the bird as one of those held 
sacred by the Egyptians ; and the researches of modern travellers have 
fully shown that it was at least a favourite dish with the priests. It is 
impossible to look at the paintings and sculptures — many will be found 
in the British Museum, and many more copied in Rocellmi's, and other 
works of the same kind — without being struck with the frequent occur- 
rence of geese represented both alive and plucked, and prepared for the 
table. That some of these represent the Chelanopex there can be no doubt. 
It is of frequent occurrence on the sculptures in the British Museum, 
though it was not a sacred bird ; unless it may have some claims to that 
honour from having been a luxurious article of food for the priests. A 
place in Upper Egypt had its name Chenoboscion, or Chenoboscia 
(goose-pens), from these animals being fed there, probably for sale; . 
though there may have been sacred geese, for the goose, we are told, 
was a bird under the care of I sis. 

The tame goose is very long-lived. " A certain friend of ours," says 
Willoughby, "of undoubted fidelity, told us that his father had once a 
goose that was known to be eighty years old, which, for aught he knew, 
might have lived another eighty years, had he not been constrained to 
kill it for its mischievousness in beating and destroying the younger 
geese." Dr. Buckland describes and figures from the clay in which the 
remains of elephant and rhinoceros are so often found, the humerus of 
a bird in size and shape nearly resembling that of a goose, which, says 
Dr. Buckland, " is the first example within my knowledge of the bones of 
birds being noticed in the diluvium of England." The name of goose- 
berry has been most probably applied from the fruit being made into a 
sauce and used for young or green geese. 



ROME, THE MISTRESS OF THE WORLD. 

An achievement almost unrivalled in military annals was the strategic 
march by Nero, which deceived Hannibal, and defeated Asdrubal. The 
first intelligence of Nero's return to Carthage, was the sight of Aedrubal's 
head thrown into his camp. When Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed, 
with a sigh, that " Rome would now be the mistress of the world." And 
yet, to this victory of Nero's it might be owing that his imperial name- 
sake reigned at all. But the infamy of the one has eclipsed the glory of 



CHARACTER OF CATO. 3, 

the other. When the name of Nero is heard, who thinks of the consul? 
But such are human things ! — Lord Byron : Notes to the Island. 

The virtues of Hannibal were counterbalanced by vices of equ. 1 
magnitude: inhuman cruelty, perfidy beyond that of a Carthaginian, no 
regard for truth, no sense of religious obligations, no fear of the gods, ar.d 
no respect for an oath. Livy ascribes to him actions which the reader :s 
unwilling to believe of so great a man, such as making bridges and ram- 
parts of the bodies of the dead, and even teaching his men to feed on 
human flesh ! During the sixteen years he was in Italy, he destroyed 400 
towns, and killed 300,000 men in battle. After his submission to Rome, 
he was persecuted by the Romans with rancour disgraceful to their na- 
tional character. After wandering about destitute and forlorn, he sought 
the protection of Prusias, king of Bithynia, whom, however, the Romans 
compelled to surrender the aged and excited Hannibal a sacrifice 1o 
their vengeance, and being beset in his fort by armed men, he swallowed 
poison, and expired, in 185 B.C.; but other accounts of his death are 
given. 



EXTENT OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 

We are sometimes under a little delusion in the estimates we form of 
the magnitude of the Roman Empire, or the multitude of troops that it 
maintained. Russia surpasses it in extent of territory, and maintains an 
army considerably more numerous. France and Austria, who rank nex 
to Russia in the number of their standing armies, could singly bring into 
the field a much larger force than the whole Roman Empire. The mili- 
tary force of the Pagan Empire is here estimated at 450,000 men ; the 
Christian monarchies of France and Austria are each of them reputed 
to maintain an army of 650,000 men. And when we reflect upon the in- 
vention of gunpowder, and the enormous force of artillery, it is evident 
that any one of the first-rate powers of modern Europe could bring into 
the field a destructive force that would sweep from the face of the earth 
the thirty legions of Adrian. The very division of Europe into a num- 
ber of States involves this increase of soldiery. In the old Roman Em- 
pire, the great Mediterranean Sea lay peaceful as a lake, and the Roman 
ships had nothing to dread but the winds and the waves ; whereas in 
modern Europe many quite artificial boundaries have to be guarded by 
an array of soldiers. " Belgium defends her flats with a hundred thou- 
sand men, and the marshes of Holland are secured by sixty thousand 
Dutch." — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. 



CHARACTER OF CATO. 

Dr. Mommsen, in his History of Rome, gives the following depreciatory 
and unjust character of this " noble Roman": — 

" Cato was anything but a great man ; but with all that shortsighted- 
ness, that perversity, that dry prolixity, and those spurious phrases which 
have stamped him, for his own and for all time, as the ideal of unreflect- 



32 MIDDLE TON'S LIFE OF CICERO. 



ing republicanism, and the favourite of all who make it their hobby, he 
was yet the only man who honourably and courageously defended in the 
last struggles the great system doomed to destruction. It only elevates 
the deep and tragic significance of his death, that he was himself a fool ; 
in truth, it is just because Don Quixote is a fool that he is a tragic 
feature. It is an affecting fact, that on that world stage on which so 
many great and wise men had moved and acted, the fool was destined 
to give the epilogue. His greatest title to respect is the involuntary 
homage which Caesar rendered to him when he made an exception to 
the contemptuous clemency with which he was wont to treat his oppo- 
nents, Pompeians as well as Republicans, in the case of Gato alone." 



cesar's conquest of gaul. 

Dr. Mommsen, in his History of Rome, does not conceal the atrocities 
committed by Caesar in this war, nor yet the carnage of the vanquished 
nation ; nor does he dwell with too much emphasis on Caesar's clemency 
in pacifying Gaul, or extol too highly his settlement of the province. 
He knows that a solitude may be called peace, and he is perfectly aware 
to what account the great Proconsul turned his conquest. But he tries 
to make us forget these deeds in contemplating the glorious results so far 
as regards the safety of Rome, and he persists not only in describing 
Caesar as conquering Gaul in the interests of humanity, but he thinks 
him entitled to claim credit for all that ever flowed from the conquest. 
This, the merest fallacy of hero-worship, is thus exemplified : — 

" What the Gothic Theodoric achieved was nearly effected by Ario- 
vistus. Had it so happened, our civilization would have hardly stood in 
any more intimate relation to the Romano- Greek than to the Indian and 
Assyrian culture. That there is a bridge connecting the past story of 
Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern history ; that 
Western Europe is Romanic and Germanic Europe classic ; that the 
names of Theinistocles and Scipio have to us a very different sound from 
those of Asoka and Salmanassar ; that Homer and Sophocles are not 
merely like the Vedas and Kalidasa, attractive to the literary botanist, 
but bloom for us in our own garden — all this is the work of Caesar ; and 
while the creation of his great antagonist in the East has been almost re- 
duced to ruin by the tempests of the Middle Ages, the structure of Caesar 
has outlasted these thousands of years, and stands erect for what we may 
term perpetuity." 



MIDDLETON'S LIFE OF CICERO. 

Macaulay has observed that the fanaticism of the devout worshipper 
of genius is proof against all evidence and all argument. The character 
of his idol is matter of faith ; and the province of faith is not to be 
invaded by reason. He maintains his superstition with a credulity as 



MIDDLETON'S LIFE OF CICERO. 33 

boundless and a zeal as unscrupulous as can be found in the most 
ardent partisans of religious or political factions. The most decisive 
proofs are rejected ; the plainest rules of morality are explained away ; 
extensive and important portions of history are completely distorted 
The enthusiast represents facts with all the effrontery of an advocate, 
and confounds right and wrong with all the dexterity of a Jesuit ; and 
all this only in order that some man who has been in his grave many 
ages may have a fairer character than he deserves. 

i " Middleton's Life of Cicero is a striking instance of the influence of 
this sort of partiality. Never was there a character which it was easier to 
read than that of Cicero. Never was there a mind keener or more 
critical than that of Middleton. Had the biographer brought to his 
examination of his favourite statesman's conduct but a very small 
part of the acuteness and sense which he displayed when he was 
engaged in investigating the high pretensions of Epiphanius and Justin 
Martyr, he could not have failed to produce a most valuable history of 
a most interesting portion of time ; but this most ingenious and learned 
man, though 

So wary held and wise, 
That, as 'twas said, he scarce received 
For gospel what the church believed, 

had a superstition of his own. The great Iconoclast was himself an 
idolater. The great Awocato del Diavolo, while he disputed, with no 
small ability, the claims of Cyprian and Athanasius to a place in the 
calendar, was himself composing a lying legend in honour of St. Tully. 
He was holding up as a model of every virtue a man whose talents and 
acquirements, indeed, can never be too highly extolled, and who was by 
no means destitute of amiable qualities, but whose whole soul was under 
the dominion of a girlish vanity and a craven fear. Actions for which 
Cicero himself, the most eloquent and skilful of advocates, could con- 
ceive no excuse, actions which in his confidential correspondence he 
mentioned with remorse and shame, are represented by his biographer 
as wise, virtuous, heroic. The whole history of the great revolution 
which overthrew the Roman aristocracy, the whole state of parties, the 
character of every public man, is elaborately misrepresented, in order to 
make out something which may look like a defence of one most eloquent 
and accomplished trimmer. 

We are not surprised that the Emperor of the French, in his Life of 
Julius Casar, should have made the most of the weakness of Cicero, and 
should have glossed over his eminent qualities, for, unluckily, Cicero's 
view of Cassar contradicts that of his imperial admirer. Every school- 
boy can appreciate the vanity of the accomplished philosopher and 
rhetorician ; and we quite admit that on some occasions he seems to 
have been timid and vacillating, that he tried to keep well with both 
parties in the State, and that he was a lukewarm adherent, as well as a 
placable antagonist. But Cicero displayed consummate ability in over- 
whelming the conspiracy of Catiline ; his civil and even his military 
services in his provincial government were conspicuous; and, by his 

D 



34 ROME UNDER THE OLIGARCHY. 

example and his noble eloquence, he endeavoured to raise the standard 
of statesmen, and to oppose political tyranny and corruption. These 
^reat merits defy detraction; and even the trimming tendencies of 
Cicero, placed by the Emperor in harsher relief than by Lord Macaulay, 
may not have been caused by moral cowardice. His pure, scrupulous, 
and upright character seems to have shrunk from taking a decided course 
in an age of revolution and disorder ; and he shaped his way between 
hostile parties, and leaders ready to overwhelm the State, not so much 
to advance his own interests, as from a desire to moderate and to con- 
ciliate, and a strong dislike to extreme measures. We cannot forget 
the remark of Thucydides, that in times such as those of Cicero, the 
wise and the good are ever denounced as wanting in downrightness and 
zeal, and seem to oscillate between opposite factions. 



THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 

This celebrated collection of books was formed and maintained by 
the first Ptolemy, King of Egypt, and his successors. Eusebius states 
the number of volumes at 100,000; though Josephus sets it at 200,000. 
Orosius tells us 400,000 volumes, when burnt with the fleet by Julius 
Caesar. It is not, however, generally known that the rolls (yolumina) 
here spoken of contained far less than a printed volume : for instance, the 
Metamorphoses of Ovid, in fifteen books, would make fifteen volumes ; 
and one Didymus is said by Athenaeus to have written 3500 volumes. 
This consideration will bring the number assigned at least within the 
bounds of credibility. 

After the siege of Alexandria, the library was re-established, and con- 
tinued to increase for four centuries, when it was dispersed. It was 
again re-established, until Alexandria was conquered by the Arabs, a.d. 
640. The collection was then distributed in the various baths of Alex- 
andria, to be burnt in the stoves ; and, after six months, not a vestige of 
them remained ; so says a Syriac chronicle. D'Herbelot tells there were 
then 4000 baths in Alexandria, which were heated by the burning for six 
months ! Renaudot discredits this as an Eastern tale. At any rate, 
Amrou, who had, for centuries, been set down as guilty of burning the 
Alexandrian Library, is now exonerated from that unenviable dis- 
tinction. 

We read, however, of other destruction of prodigious numbers of 
books. At the taking of Bagdad by Halagon, the Tartars threw the 
books belonging to the colleges of this city into the river Euphrates, 
when, we are told, the number was so great, that they formed a bridge, 
across which went foot-passengers and horsemen ! 



ROME UNDER THE OLIGARCHY. 

It was a dark and disastrous era when the sword of Sulla restored 
order, and having, after atrocious crimes, put an end to the struggles of 



ROME UNDER THE OLIGARCHY. 



3.i 



the democracy, and covered Italy with blood and ashes, he handed over 
the dominion of the world to the reorganized but corrupt Senate, 
invested by him with absolute power. We may judge from Dr! 
Mommsen's description of the most respectable members of this body 
what was the nature of its meaner elements : — 

" Even the better aristocrats were not much less remiss and short- 
sighted than the average senators of the time. In presence of an out- 
ward foe the more eminent among them, doubtless, proved themselves 
useful and brave ; but no one of them evinced the desire or the skill to 
solve the problems of politics proper, and to guide the vessel of the 
State through the stormy seas of intrigue and faction with the hand of 
a true pilot. Their political wisdom was limited to a sincere belief in 
the oligarchy as the sole means of salvation, and to a cordial hatred and 
courageous execration of demagogism, as well as of every individual 
authority seeking to emancipate itself. Their petty ambition was con- 
tented with little They were content when they had gained, 

not favour and influence, but the consulship and a triumph, and a place 
of honour in the Senate ; and at the very time when, with right ambi- 
tion, they would have first begun to be truly useful to their country 
and their party, they retired from the political stage to spend their 

days in princely luxury The traditional aptitude and the 

individual self-denial in which all oligarchic government is based were 
lost in the decayed and artificially restored Roman aristocracy of this 
age." 

The provinces ruined by a succession of harpies, Italy partly 
disfranchised and largely unpeopled, and the vast capital, corrupt 
yet supreme, with its frightful contrasts of power and misery, form 
a spectacle possibly too darkly painted, but of remarkable and 
appalling interest. Dr. Mommsen has this frightful reflection on 
Rome : — 

" It is a dreadful picture, this picture of Italy under the oligarchy. 
There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between 
the world of beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and 
painfully this contrast was felt on both sides — the giddier the height to 
which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned — the more 
frequently, amid that changeful world of speculation and playing at 
hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top, and again 
from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two 
worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in 
the like annihilation of family life — which is yet the germ and core of 
all nationality— in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial 
economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing 
only in its scale, the like demoralization of criminals, the like longing to 
begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove 
the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of 
slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one- 
peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a Slave 
State has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the 
same way. As rivers glisten in different colours, but a common «ewer 

D2 



3 6 CRUELTIES OF HANNO. 

everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch 
resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius, and still more decidedly 
the Carthage of Hannibal's time." 



CRUELTIES OF HANNO AND THE CARTHAGINIANS. 

Mr. Saxe Bannister, in his Records of British Enterprise beyond Sea s 
says in a note : — " The first nomade tribe the voyagers reached was 
friendly, and furnished Hanno with interpreters. At length they dis- 
covered a nation whose language was unknown to the interpreters. 
These strangers they attempted to seize, and, upon their resistance, they 
took three of the women, whom they put to death, and carried their 
skins to Carthage." — (Geogr. Graci Minores, Paris, 1826, p. 115.) 

" Hanno obtained interpreters from a people who dwelt on the banks 
of a large river, called the Lixus, and supposed to be the modern St. 
Cyprian. Having sailed thence for several days, and touched at diffe- 
rent places, planting a colony in one of them, he came to a mountainous 
country, inhabited by savages, who wore the skins of wild beasts. At 
a distance of twelve days' sail he came to some Ethiopians, who could 
not endure the Carthaginians, and who spoke unintelligibly even to the 
Lixite interpreters. These are the people whose women Mr. Bannister 
says they killed. Hanno sailed from this inhospitable coast fifteen days, 
and came to the gulf South Horn. Here was an island containing a 
lake, and in this another island full of wild men, but the women were 
much more numerous, with hairy bodies. The voyagers pursued the 
men, who, flying to the precipices, defended themselves with stones, 
and could not be taken. Three women, who bit and scratched their 
leaders, would not follow them. Having killed them, the voyagers 
brought their skins to Carthage." Here it is not intimated that the 
creatures who defended themselves spoke any language ; while the 
description of the behaviour of the men, and the bodies of the women, 
is not repugnant to the supposition that they were large apes, baboons, 
or ourang-outangs common to this part of Africa. At all events, the 
voyagers do not say that they flayed a people having the faculty of 
speech. In the History of Maritime Discovery, it is stated that these 
Gorilla were probably some species of ourang-outang." Purchas says 
they might be the baboons or Pongos of those parts. Ramusio gathered 
from a Portuguese pilot some particulars of this Gorgon Island full of 
hairy men and women— judged to be Fernando Po. 

Gosselin, also, speaking of this part of Hanno's voyage, says: — 
"Hanno encountered a troop of ourang-outangs, which he took for 
savages, because these animals walk erect, often having a staff in their 
hands to support themselves, as well as for attack or defence ; and they 
throw stones when they are pursued. They are the satyrs, and the 
Argipani, with which Pliny says Atlas was peopled. It would be use- 
less to say more on this subject, as it is avowed by all the modern com- 
mentators of the Periplus." 

Upon this, says Mr. S. W. Singer (Notes and Queries, No. 26), " the 
relation we have here is evidently only an abridgment or summary, made 



HANNIBAL'S PASSAGE THROUGH THE ALPS. 37 



by some Greek studious of Carthaginian affairs, long subsequent to the 
time of Hanno; and, judging from a passage in Pliny (1. ii. c. 67), it 
appears that the ancients were acquainted with other extracts from the 
original ; yet, though its authenticity has been doubted by Strabo and 
others, there seems little reason to question that it is a correct outline of 
the voyage. That the Carthaginians were oppressors of the people they 
subjugated may be probable; yet we must not, on such slender grounds 
as this narration affords, presume that they would wantonly kill and 
flay human beings to possess themselves of their skins." 



HANNIBAL'S VINEGAR PASSAGE THROUGH THE ALPS. 

. The passage of Hannibal across the Alps has been a matter of much 
dispute. Whitaker, in a work published in 1794, maintains that the 
passage was made over the Great St. Bernard. Our inquiry is, how- 
ever, not as to the route, but the means by which this great exploit 
was accomplished. Having gained the summit of the Alpine range, on 
the top of the highest eminence he pitched his camp, and continued for 
two days to recruit the exhausted strength both of men and beasts : to 
make a way down the rock, through which it was necessary to effect a 
passage, he felled a number of trees which stood near, raised a vast pile 
of timber, which he set on fire as soon as a strong wind arose, and, 
when the stone was violently heated, he poured vinegar upon it, which 
made it either crumble in pieces or rend. Through the rock disjointed by 
the power of heat, he opened a way with iron instruments, and made the 
descent so gentle that both the beasts of burden and the elephants could 
be brought down. Such is the account of Livy, 1st book, 3rd decade. 

Sir Thomas Browne is content to class the above with his Vulgar 
Errors, _ as follows : — " That Hannibal ate or brake through the 
Alps with vinegar may be too grossly taken, and the author of the 
Life annexed unto Plutarch affirmeth only he used this artifice upon the 
tops of some of the highest mountains. For as it is vulgarly understood 
that he cut a passage for his army through these mighty mountains, it 
may seem incredible not only in the greatness of the effect, but the 
quantity of the efficient, and such as behold them may think an ocean of 
vinegar too little for that effect." 

Upon this Dr. (Sir Christopher) Wren notes : " There needed not 
more than some few hogsheads of vinegar ; for, having hewed down the 
woods of fir growing there, and with the huge piles thereof calcined the 
tops of some cliffes which stood in his waye, a small quantity of vinegar 
poured on the fire-glowing rocks would make them cleave in sunder, 
as is manifest in calcined flints, which being often burned, and as often 
quencht in vinegar, will in fine turn into an impalpable powder, as is 
truly experimented, and is dayly manifest in the lime-kilnes." 

Dr. M'Keevor {Annals of Philosophy, N. S., vol. v.) discusses this 
question, and considers the expansive operation of the fire on the water 
percolating through the fissures of the rocks, may have led to the de- 
tachment of large portions by explosions, just as masses are detached 



38 CORRUPT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

from cliffs, by a similar physical cause ; and icebergs, with summer-heat, 
break away. Or perhaps the only vinegar employed might be the 
pyroligneous acid produced by the combustion of the wood. But Mr. 
Brayley, the chemist, supposes Hannibal might have used vinegar to 
dissolve a particular mass of impeding limestone. 

An ingenious commentator, less credulous than either of the foregoing, 
observes : — " The vinegar of the Ancients must have been, beyond all 
comparison, greatly more potent than any of modern times, for if all 
that is recorded of it be true, it could not only dissolve pearls, but melt 
mountains. I must confess, however, to having been always exceedingly 
and incurably sceptical as to the story of Hannibal having made a way 
for his army across and through the Alps by such a coup-de-main of 
scientific skill as well as generalship, as enabled him to mollify the solid 
rock. He and each of his soldiers must have been provided with more 
than a cruet-ful of vinegar. An ingenious friend of mine, who has 
made such matters his study, assures me that even 22,000,000,000 
gallons of vinegar, or even aquafortis, would make scarcely the slightest 
perceptible impression on the Alps, except as so much water would do ; 
in fact, the story of Hannibal's winning his way over the Alps with 
vinegar is one of those puzzling problems in history which will never 
be solved satisfactorily." 



CORRUPT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

The literature of Europe, shortly before the final dissolution of the 
Roman Empire, fell entirely into the hands of the clergy, who were 
long venerated as the sole instructors of mankind. For several cen- 
turies, it was extremely rare to meet with a layman who could read or 
write ; and, of course, it was still rarer to meet with one able to com- 
pose a work. There was nothing men were unwilling to believe. 
Nothing came amiss to their greedy and credulous ears. Histories of 
omens, prodigies, apparitions, strange portents, monstrous appearances 
in the heavens, the wildest and most incoherent absurdities, were repeated 
from mouth to mouth, and copied from book to book, with as much 
care as if they were the choicest treasures of human wisdom. Hence 
the history of Europe became corrupted to an extent for which we can 
find no parallel in any other period. There was, properly speaking, no 
history ; and, unhappily, men, not satisfied with the absence of truth, 
supplied its place by the invention of falsehood, especially regarding the 
origin of different nations. During many centuries it was believed by 
every people that they were directly descended from ancestors who had 
been present at the siege of Troy. This was a proposition which no 
one thought of doubting. The descent of the Kings of France from 
the Trojans was universally believed before the sixteenth century. 
Polydore Vergil, who died in the middle of the sixteenth century, at- 
tacked this opinion in regard to England, and thereby made his history 
unpopular : he discarded Brute as an unreal personage. Matthew of 
\\ estminster describes the descent of the Britons from Priam and 
Apneas j and at the beginning of the fourteenth century, their Trojan 



CORRUPT HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 39 

origin was stated as a notorious fact. In a letter written to Pope 
Boniface, by Edward I., and signed by the English nobility, it was 
admitted that the French were descended from Francus, whom everybody 
knew to be the son of Hector ; and it was also known that the Britons 
came from Brutus, whose father was no other than iEneas himself, 
though some historians affirmed that he was the great-grandson. 

The great historians of the Middle Ages usually begin their history 3t 
a very remote period ; and the events relating to their subject are often 
traced back, in an unbroken series, from the moment when Noah left 
the ark, or even when Adam passed the gates of Paradise. William of 
Malmesbury traces the genealogies of the Saxon kings back to Adam ; 
the Spanish chroniclers present an uninterrupted succession of Spanish 
kings from Tubal, a grandson of Noah. And in the Notes to a Chronicle 
of London from 1089 to 1483, edition 4to, 1827, there is a pedigree, 
in which the history of the Bishops of London is traced back, not only 
to the migration of Brutus from Troy, but also to Noah and Adam. 

The Middle Age historians likewise say that the capital of France is 
called after Paris, the son of Priam, because he fled there when Trov 
was overthrown. Monteil, in his curious book, Histoire des divers Etats, 
mentions the old belief that the Parisians are from the blood of the 
kings of the ancient Trojans, by Paris, son of Priam; even in the 
seventeenth century this idea was not extinct ; and Coryat, who tra- 
velled in France in 1608, gives another version of it : he says, "As for 
her name of Paris, she hath it (as some write) from Paris, the eighteenth 
King of Gallia Celtica, whom some write to have been lineally 
descended from Japhet, one of the three sons of Noah, and to have 
founded this city." 

; They also mention that Tours owed its name to being the burial-place 
ofTuronus, one of the Trojans, while the City of Troyes was actually 
built by the Trojans, as its etymology clearly proves. It was well 
ascertained that Nuremberg was called after the Emperor Nero, and 
Monconys, who was at Nuremberg in 1663, found this opinion still 
held there, and he seems himself half inclined to believe it. Jerusalem, 
it was held, was called after King Jebus, a man of vast celebrity in the 
Middle Ages, but whose existence later historians have not been able to 
verify. The river H umber received its name because in ancient times a 
king of the Huns had been drowned in it. The Gauls derived their 
origin, according to some, from Galathia, a female descendant of Japhet ; 
according to others, from Gomer, the son of Japhet ; and these two 
opinions long divided the learned world. Prussia was called after 
Prussus, a brother of Augustus. This was remarkably modern, but 
Silesia had its name from the prophet Elisha, from whom, indeed, the 
Silesians descended ; while as to the city of Zurich, its exact date was 
a matter of dispute, but it was unquestionably built in the time ot 
Abraham, as Coryat when at Zurich, in 1608, was told by the learned 
Hospinian. It was likewise from Abraham and Sarah that the Gipsies 
immediately sprung — their " seuls enfans legitimes." The blood of 
the Saracens was less pure, since they were only descended from Sarah, 
in what way is not mentioned. At all events, the Scotch certainly came 
from Egypt, for they were originally the issue of Scota, who was a 



4 o ABELARD AND ELOISA. 

daughter of Pharaoh, and who bequeathed to them her name ; stated 
in a letter to the Pope, early in the fourteenth century, as a well-known 
historical fact. 

On sundry similar matters the Middle Ages possessed information 
equally valuable. It was well known that the city of Naples was 
founded on eggs; and it was also known that the Order of St. Michael 
was instituted in person by the archangel, who was himself the first 
knight, and to whom, in fact, chivalry owes its origin. (See Mills's 
Chivalry). In regard to Tartary, that people, of course, proceeded 
from Tartarus, ascribed to the piety of St. Louis. Since the thirteenth 
century the subject has attracted the attention of English divines ; and 
the celebrated theologian Whiston, mentions : "My last famous dis- 
covery, or rather my revival of Dr. Giles Fletcher's famous discovery, 
that the Tartars are no other than the ten tribes of Israel which have 
been so long sought for in vain." Then the Turks were identical with 
the Tartars, and it was notorious that since the cross had fallen into 
Turkish hands all Christian children had ten teeth less than formerly ; 
an universal calamity, which there seemed to be no means of repairing.* 



ABELARD AND ELOISA. 
Abelard died long before Eloisa; and the hour never arrived for him 
of which with such tenderness she says, — 

It will be then no crime to gaze on me. 
But another anticipation has been fulfilled in a degree that he could 
hardly have contemplated, the anticipation, namely, — 

That ages hence, when all her woes were o'er, 

And that rebellious heart should beat no more, 
wandering feet should be attracted from afar, 

To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs. 
as the common resting-place and everlasting marriage-bed of Abelard 
and Eloisa. They were buried in the same grave ; Abelard dying first 
by a few weeks more than twenty-one years ; his tomb was opened to 
admit the coffin of Eloisa ; and the tradition at Quincy, the parish near 
Nogent-sur-Seine, in which the monastery of the Paraclete is situated, was 
— that at the moment of interment Abelard opened his arms to receive 
the impassioned creature that once had loved him so frantically, and 
whom he loved with a romance so memorable. In the last century, six 
hundred years after their departure from earth, there was placed over 
their common remains a Latin inscription, singularly solemn in its brief 
simplicity, considering that it came from Paris, and from Academic wits. 
The epitaph is thus Englished: — " Here, under the same marble slab, lie 
the founder of this Monastery, Peter Abelard, and its earliest Abbess, 
Heloisa, once united in studies, in love, and in their unhappy nuptial 
engagements, and in penitential sorrow ; but now, our hope is reunited 
for ever in bliss." 

* Selected and abridged from Buckle's History of Civil Lxtion in England, 
vol. i. pp. 282—288. 



4i 



Utgffrs antr |)jopIai Jfotfona. 




" INCREDIBILIA OF THE ANCIENTS. 

IR THOMAS BROWNE shows from Palaephatus's book 
" concerning Incredible Tales" — 
" That the fable of Orpheus by his music making woods and 
trees to follow him, is founded upon a crew of mad women 
retired unto a mountain being pacified by his music, and caused to 
descend with boughs in their hands : whence the magic of Orpheus's 
harp, and its power to attract the senseless trees about it. 

"That Medea, the famous sorceress, could renew youth, and make 
old men young again ; being nothing else but that from the knowledge 
of simples she had a receipt to make white hair black, and reduce old 
heads into the tincture of youth again. 

"The fable of Geryon and Cerberus with three heads was this : Geryon 
was of the city of Tricarinia (Trinacria), that is, of three heads ; and 
Cerberus, of the same place, was one of his dogs, which, running into 
a cave in pursuit of his master's oxen, Hercules perforce drew him out 
of that place : from whence the conceits of those days affirmed no less 
than that Hercules descended into hell, and brought up Cerberus into 
the habitation of the living. 

" Upon the like ground was raised the figment of Briareus, who 
dwelling in a city called Hekatoncheira, the fancies of those times as- 
signed him a hundred hands. 

" That Niobe weeping over her children was turned into a stone, was 
nothing else but that during her life she erected over their sepulchres a 
marble tomb of her own. 

" When Actaeon had undone himself with dogs and the prodigal at- 
tendants of hunting, they made a solemn story of how he was devoured 
by his hounds. And upon the like grounds was raised the anthropo- 
phagie of Diomedes his horses. 

" Diodorus plainly delivereth that the famous fable of Charon had this 
nativity : who, being no other but the common ferryman of Egypt that 
wafted over the dead bodies from Memphis, was made by the Greeks 
to be the ferryman of hell, and solemn stories raised after of him. 

" The Centaurs were a body of young men from Thessaly, who first 
trained and mounted horses for repelling a herd of wild bulls belonging 
to Ixion, king of the Lapithas. They pursued these wild bulls on horse- 
back, and pierced them with their spears, thus acquiring both the 
name of prickers, and the imputed attribute of joint body with the 
horse. 

" The Dragon whom Cadmus killed at Thebes was in reality Draco, 
king of Thebes ; and the dragon's teeth which he is said to have sown, 



42 THE IVAN DERI NG JEW. 

and from whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of fact 
elephant's teeth which Cadmus as a rich Phoenician had brought over 
with him. The sons of Draco sold these elephants' teeth, and employed 
the proceeds to levy troops against Cadmus. 

" Daedalus, instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from 
Crete in a sailing-boat, under a violent storm. Kottus, Briareus, and 
Gyges, were not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants of the 
village of Hekatoncheira in Upper Macedonia, who warred with the in- 
habitants of Mount Olympus against the Titans. Scylla, whom Odysseus 
so narrowly escaped, was a fast- sailing piratical vessel; as was also 
Pegasus, the alleged winged horse of Bellerophon. 

" Again, Gal and Westermann, like Palasphatus, interpret Scylla as a 
beautiful woman surrounded with abominable parasites. She ensnared 
and ruined the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent 
enough to escape her. Atlas was a great astronomer. Pasiphae fell in 
love with a youth named Taurus. The monster called the Chimaera was 
in reality a ferocious queen, who had two brothers named Leo and 
Draco. The ram which carried Phryxus and Helle across the iEgean 
was a boatman named Krius. 

" Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts minotaurs, sphinxes, 
centaurs, &c, as realities; and Dr. Delany, in his Life of David, pro- 
duces some ingenious arguments to prove that Orpheus was in reality, 
the same person with David." 



THE WANDERING JEW. 

Of the many myths which diverge from every little incident of Our 
Saviour's career, the legend of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, is cer- 
tainly the most striking and widely distributed. According to the old 
ballad, in Percy's collection : 

He hath past through many a foreign place : 

Arabia, Egypt, Africa, 
Greece, Syria, and great Thrace, 

And throughout all Hungaria. 

All the nations of the Seven Champions have it in some shape or 
other, and it is amusing to note the way in which the story adapts itself 
to the exigencies of time and place. In Germany, where he appeared 
a.d. 1547, he was a kind of Polyglot errant, battling professors and 
divines with the accumulated learning of fifteen centuries. In Paris, he 
heralded the advent of Cagliostro and Mesmer, cured diseases, and 
astounded the salons by his prodigious stories. He remembered seeing 
Nero standing on a hill to enjoy the flames of his capital ; and was a 
particular crony of Mahomet's father at Ormus. It was here, too, he 
anticipated the coming scepticism, by declaring, from personal experience, 
that all history was a tissue of lies. In Italy the myth has become 
■nterwoven with the national art lore. When he came to Venice, he 
Drought with him a fine cabinet of choice pictures, including his own 



THE WANDERING JEW. 43 

portrait by Titian, taken some two centuries before. In England John 
Bull has endowed him with the commercial spirit of his stationary- 
brethren, and, to complete his certificate of naturalization, made him 
always thirsty ! But the Jew of Quarter Sessions' Reports, who is 
always getting into scrapes, is not the Jew of the rural popular legends ; 
in which he is invariably represented as a purely benevolent being, whose 
crime has been long since expiated by his cruel punishment, and there- 
fore entitled to the help of every good Christian. When on the weary 
way to Golgotha, Christ fainting, and overcome under the burden of 
the cross, asked him, as he was standing at his door, for a cup of water 
to cool his parched throat, he spurned the supplication, and bade him on 
the faster. " I go," said the Saviour, " but thou shalt thirst, and tarry 
till I come." And ever since then, by day and night, through the long 
centuries, he has been doomed to wander about the earth, ever craving 
for water, and ever expecting the day of judgment which shall end his 
toils. 

Sometimes, during the cold winter nights, the lonely cottager will be 
awoke by a plaintive demand for " Water, good Christian ! water for 
the love of God !" And if he looks out into the moonlight, he will see 
a venerable old man in antique raiment, with grey flowing beard and a 
tall staff, who beseeches his charity with the most earnest gesture. Woe 
to the churl who refuses him water or shelter. If, on the contrary, you 
treat him well, and refrain from indelicate inquiries respecting his age — 
on which point he is very touchy — his visit is sure to bring good luck. 
Perhaps years afterwards, when you are on your death-bed, he may 
happen to be passing ; and if he should, you are safe ; for three knocks 
with his staff will make you hale, and he never forgets any kindnesses. 
Many stories are current of his wonderful cures.* 

In the Athenaum, No. 2036, it is ingeniously remarked : " When it 
is remembered that these Wandering Jews were received at great men's 
tables, and were kept as guests as long as they had any wild story to tell 
(they all grew old till they were a hundred, and then began again, at the 
age at which Christ found them) it is simply astonishing that we do not 
hear more of these clever and erratic parasites." The writer then relates 
the last on the mysterious roll. 

" From the year 18 1 8 (perhaps earlier) to about 1830, a handsomely- 
featured Jew, in semi-eastern costume, fair-haired, bare-headed, his eyes 
intently fixed on a little ancient book he held in both hands, might be 
seen gliding through the streets of London, but was never seen to issue 
from or to enter a house, or to pause upon his way. He was popularly 
known as " the Wandering Jew," but there was something so dignified 
and anxious in his look, that he was never known to suffer the slightest 
molestation. Young and old looked silently on him as he passed, and 
shook their heads pitifully when he had gone by. He disappeared, was 
seen again in London some ten years later, still young, fair-haired, bare- 
headed, his eyes bent on his book, his feet going steadily forward as he 



This able precis is from Notes and Queries, No. 322. 



44 THE FOUNDING OF CARTHAGE. 

went straight on ; and men again whispered as he glided through our 
streets for the last time, ' The Wandering Jew !' There were many 
who believed that he was the very man to whom had been uttered the 
awful words, ' Tarry thou till I come !' " 

Roger of Wendover, a monk of St. Albans, and Matthew Paris, a 
Benedictine monk of Clugny and likewise of St. Albans, give the oldest 
traditions of the Wandering Jew. According to Menzel (History oj 
German Poetry) the whole tradition is but an allegory, symbolizing 
heathenism. M. Lacroix suggests that it represents the Hebrew race 
dispersed and wandering throughout the earth, but not destroyed. In 
Germany, the tradition of the Wandering Jew became connected with 
John Bultadaeus, a real person, said to have been at Antwerp in the 
13th century, again in the 15th, and a third time in the 16th, with 
every appearance of age and decrepitude. His last recorded apparition 
was at Brussels, in April, 1774. Southey, in his Curse of Kehama, and 
Croly, in his Salathiel, trace the course of the Wandering Jew, but in 
violation of the whole legend ; and Eugene Sue adopted the name as the 
title of one of his most popular and most immoral novels (Le Juif 
Errant), though the Jew scarcely figures at all in the work. (Wheeler's 
Noted Names of Fiction.) 

There is a well-known English ballad on the Wandering Jew, perhaps 
of the time of Elizabeth. It relates to the Jew's appearance in Germany 
in the sixteenth century. The first stanza is, — 

Whereas in fair Jerusalem, 

Our Saviour Christ did live, 
And for the sins of all the world 

His own dear life did give : 
The wicked Jews, with scoff and scorn, 

Did dailye him molest, 
That never till he left his life 

Our Saviour could not rest. 



THE FOUNDING OF CARTHAGE. 

Most ancient writers agree in following an old tradition, that Carthage 
was founded about a hundred years before Rome, by Dido or Elissa, 
upon her arrival in Africa, after her flight from Tyre ; when the wily 
Queen purchased as much land of the natives of the former place as she 
could cover, or rather enclose, with an ox's hide ; and thereupon cut the 
hide into thongs, and thus included a much larger space than the sellers 
expected. Now, the place which afterwards became the citadel of Car- 
thage was called Betzura, or Bosra — i.e., the castle; a name which the 
Greeks altered into Byrsa, a hide, from the shape of the peninsula re- 
sembling an ox-hide. This tale, which is either related or alluded to by 
Appian and Dionysius the geographer amongst the Greeks, and by Justin, 
Virgil, Silius Italicus, and others of the Latins, has been applied by later 
writers. Thus, Sigebert, monk of Gemblours, in 1100, relates that 
Hengist, the first Saxon king of Kent, purchased of the British king, and 



SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. 45 

enclosed, a site called Castellum Corrigioe, or the Castle of the Thong] but 
there being several more edifices named Thong, or Tong, in England, as 
in Kent, Lincolnshire, Shropshire, and Yorkshire (Doncaster being 
written in Saxon Thongceaster), the story has been applied to most, if not 
all of them. It is true that Sigebert knew nothing of the Greek authors, 
but he was well acquainted with Justin and Virgil, and Geoffrey of 
Monmouth, 1 159, who has the same story. Again, Saxo Grammaticus, 
in it 70, applied the tale to I varus, who, by the thong artifice in respect 
of Hella, got a footing in Britain. The like story has travelled to the 
East Indies. "There is a tradition," says Hamilton, "that the Portu- 
guese circumvented the King of Guzerat, as Dido did the Africans, 
when they gave her leave to build Carthage, by describing no more 
ground than could be circumscribed in an ox's hide, which having ob- 
tained, they cut a fine thong of a great length," &c. Now, the Indians 
knew nothing of the Greek or Latin authors, nor probably did the Por- 
tuguese, who first made the settlement at Din ; though it may have been 
carried there as a tradition by missionaries from Europe. (Gentleman s 
Magazine, 1771.) 

This legend seems to have gone round the world. Hassun Subah, 
the chief of the Assassins, is said to have acquired in the same manner 
the hill-fort of Allahamowt. The Persians maintain that the British got 
Calcutta in the same way ; and it is somewhere stated, that this was the 
mode by which one of our colonies in America obtained their land of 
the Indians. An English tradition avers that it was by a similar trick 
Hengist and Horsa got a settlement in the Isle of Thanet. 

To the legend of Dido's expiatory sacrifice upon a vast funeral pile 
Virgil has given a new colour by interweaving the adventures of iEneas, 
and thus connecting the foundation legends of Carthage and Rome, care- 
less of his deviation from the received mythical chronology. Dido was 
worshipped as a goddess at Carthage until the destruction of the city ; 
she is, with some probability, imagined to be identical with Astarte, the 
divine patroness under whose auspices the colony was originally estab- 
lished ; the tale of the funeral pile and self-burning appearing in the reli- 
gious ceremonies of other Cilician and Syrian towns. 

Napoleon I. used to compare our countrymen to the Carthaginians • 
both being distinguished by their success in commerce, their command of 
the sea, and their numerous colonies ; and he predicted that a similar fate, 
originating in similar causes, would overtake his great rival. But the 
comparison is imperfect ; the reputation of the Carthaginians was not 
equal to that of their country, and the reproach of Punic Faith still 
adhered to their crafty and subtle character. 



SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. 

It has been strangely asserted that Alban Butler identifies St. George 
the Martyr with George, the infamous Arian ; whereas he settles the 
question as follows : — " Certain ancient heretics forged false acts of St. 



4 6 SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON. 

George which the learned Pope Gelasius condemned in 494. Calvin 
and the'centuriators call him an imaginary saint; but their slander is 
confuted by most authentic titles and monuments. Junen, Reynolds, 
and Ischard, blush not to confound him with George, the Arian usur- 
per of the see of Alexandria, the infamous persecutor of St. Athanasms 
and the Catholics, whom he endeavoured to dragoon into Ariamsm 
by butchering great numbers, banishing their bishops, plundering the 
homes of orphans and widows, and outraging the nuns with the utmost 
barbarity till the Gentiles, exasperated by his cruelties and scandalous 
behaviour, massacred him, under Julian. The stories of the combat of 
St George with the magician Athanasius, and the like trumpery, came 
from the mint of the Arians ; and we find them rejected by Pope Gela- 
sius and the other Catholics, who were too well acquainted with the 
Arian wolf whose acts they condemned, to confound him with the 
illustrious martyr of Christ; though the forgeries of the heretics have 
been so blended with the truth in the history of this holy martyr, that, 
as we have it, there is no means of separating the sterling from the 
counterfeit." 

Again as to the dragon of St. George, the learned Pettingall shows that 
the symbol is merely a relic of the ancient amulets, invented by Oriental 
nations to express the virtues of Mithra, the sun, and the confidence 
which they reposed in that great luminary. From the Pagans he says, 
" The use of these charms passed to the Basilidians, and m their 
Abraxas the traces of the ancient Mithras and the more modern St. 
George are equally visible. In the dark ages, the Christians borrowed 
their superstitions from the heretics, but they disguised the origin or 
them, and transformed into the saint the sun of the Persians and the 
archangel of the Gnostics." % 

Still this is one of the class of minor historic doubts which seems least 
likely to be ever satisfactorily disposed of. Between the disparaging 
estimate of Gibbon and the more flattering one of Alban Butler it is next 
to impossible to strike the balance. The fairest course with the reader 
doubtless is to state what few facts rest upon actual testimony. 
Whether we elect to pin our belief upon the fraudulent contractor of 
Cappadocia with his loose semi- Arian tendencies, or upon the orthodox 
champion of the Romish martyrology, the oddest thing about both these 
rival hypotheses is that neither of them can be said to affect appreciably 
the real point of interest— why, that is, St. George ever came to be the 
special patron of Englishmen at all. The view of Butler and the Bollan- 
dists in other respects the weakest of the two, gives, at all events the 
go-by to the notion that the special cultus of the saint arose out of his 
favour to the national arms during the Crusades. In vain is it urged 
that St. George first fought for the host of Godfrey at Antioch, or pre- 
saged to Cceur de Lion the victory of Acre, when it is known that even 
before the Conquest, his name had its place in Saxon martyrologies. The 
true key to this difficulty is to be sought, we are persuaded, through a 
closer study of the relations between the early British Church and the 
Greek communions in the East— a subject strangely neglected by our 



SAINT DUNSTAN AND HIS MIRACLES. 47 

ecclesiastical historians. The name of St. George forms a text for some 
curious particulars upon dragon worship, and the legendary lore con- 
nected with those singular monsters in the mythology of the middh 
ages. In many instances, there is no doubt that the ravages of floods 
have been " emblematized as the malevolent deeds of dragons* ": — 

"In the seventh century, St. Romanus is said to have delivered the 
city of Rouen from one of those monsters. The feat was accomplished 
in this very simple manner. On Ascension day, Romanus, taking a con- 
demned criminal out of prison, ordered him to go and fetch the dragon. 
The criminal obeyed, and the dragon following him into the city, walked 
into a blazing fire that had previously been prepared, and was burned to 
death. To commemorate the event, King Dagobert gave the clergy of 
Rouen the annual privilege of pardoning a condemned criminal on 
Ascension day ; a right exercised with many ceremonies, till the period 
of the first Revolution. This dragon, named Gargouille (a water-spout), 
lived in the river Seine ; and as Romanus is said to have constructed 
embankments to defend Rouen from the overflowing of that river, the 
story seems to explain itself. The legends of Tarasque, the dragon of 
the Rhone, destroyed by St. Martha, and the dragon of the Garonne, 
killed by St. Martial at Bordeaux, admit of a similar explanation. The 
winding rivers resembling the convolutions of a serpent, are frequently 
found to take the name of that animal in common language, as well as 
in poetical metaphor. The river Draco, in Bithynia, is so called from 
its numerous windings, and in Italy and Germany there are rivers 
deriving their names from the same cause. In Switzerland the word 
drach has been frequently given to impetuous mountain torrents, which, 
suddenly breaking out, descend like avalanches on the lower country. 
Thus we can easily account for such local names as Drachenlok, the 
dragon's hole ; Drachenreid, the dragon's march ; and the legends of 
Struth, of Winkelreid, and other Swiss dragon-slayers." — Chambers's 
Book of Days. 



SAINT DUNSTAN AND HIS MIRACLES. 

Dunstan, " the arch miracle-monger," as Southey styles him, was in 
every way a remarkable man. At Mayfield, in Sussex, is a well called 
St. Dunstan's, which is thought to be that referred to in the legends of 
him, which say that wherever he struck his staff fountains of limpid 
water burst forth. Dunstan built the original church of wood at May- 
field, and its orientation not being accurate, was made so by an appli- 
cation of his shoulder to one of the angles, which caused it to slue 
round to its proper point, to the amazement of all present ! 

In his retreat at Glastonbury, he employed himself in such manual 
arts as were useful to the service of the Church, as a worker in metals, 
and in the formation of crosses, censers, &c. Here, to escape from 
unholy thoughts, he almost destroyed himself with fasting and labour- 



Saturday Review. 



48 SAINT DUNS TAN AND HIS MIRACLES. 

ing at his forge. Osborn relates a story of this period of his life, which 
has become one of the best known of monkish legends. The devil used 
to annoy the young saint by paying him untoward visits, in the form of a 
bear, or serpent, or other noxious animal ; but one night, as he was 
hammering at his forge, Satan came in a human form, as a woman, and 
looking in at his window, began to tempt him with improper conversa- 
tion. Dunstan bore it till he had heated his pincers sufficiently, and then, 
with the red-hot instrument, seized his visitor by the nose. So, at least, 
he is reported to have told his neighbours in the morning, when they 
inquired what those horrible cries were which had startled them from 
their sleep during the previous night. 

St. Dunstan was chosen patron saint of the Goldsmiths' Company, 
whose noble Hall, in Foster-lane, Cheapside, contains several interesting 
memorials of the holy man. Their second Hall was hung with Flemish 
tapestry, representing the history of the saint. In the court-room of the 
present Hall hangs a large painting of St. Dunstan in rich robes, and 
crozier in hand 5 while in the background the saint is taking the devil by 
the nose with a pair of tongs, the heavenly host appearing above. Their 
list of splendid jewellery is remarkable, as tending to show the antiquity, 
as well as traditionary propriety, of the goldsmiths adopting St. 
Dunstan as their patron, since it specifies among the articles, " a gold 
ring with a sapphire, of the workmanship of St. Dunstan," thus de- 
scribed in a Wardrobe Account of Edward I. 

Great honours have been paid by the Company to this saint. His 
image, of silver gilt, set with gems, adorned the screen of the second 
Hall ; and his memory was drunk, at particular times, from a great 
cup, equally rich, called " St. Dunstan' s Cup," which was surmounted 
by another image of the saint. At the Reformation, by entries in the 
Company's books, "the Image of Seynt Dunstan," and "the grete 
Standyng Cup," were "broken and turned into other plate." The 
Company had also their " St. Dunstan's Light " in St. John Zachary 
Church ; and their chapel of St. Dunstan, with a second image of him, 
in St. Paul's Cathedral. The style given him in their books is — " Seynt 
Dunstan, our blessed patron, protector, and founder."* 

St. Dunstan is also said to have built the palace at May field, when 
he was Archbishop of Canterbury, for the residence of the See ; and 
this was made the scene of his reputed contest with the devil, though 
others place it at Glastonbury. As though that was not sufficiently 
marvellous, tradition has added a clincher. After holding the evil 
spirit with his tongs for some time, the saint let him go, when he leaped 
at one bound to Tunbridge Wells, where plunging his nose into the 
spring, he imparted to the water its chalybeate qualities ; another version 
attributes the chalybeate to St. Dunstan himself, who, finding that the 
enemy's nose had imparted an unusual heat to his tongs, cooled them in 
the water at this place. May field Palace is in part an ivied ruin ; here 
are preserved St. Dunstan's forge, and anvil, and tongs. 

Walter Gale, the Sussex schoolmaster, records, that in 1749, " there 



* Curiosities of London, new edit., i858, p. 403. 



FRIAR BACON'S BRAZEN HEAD. 49 

was at Mayfield a pair of tongs, which, the inhabitants affirmed, and 
many believed, to be that with which St. Dunstan " pinched the devil 
by the nose." 



SAINT LUKE NOT A PAINTER. 

Little is recorded of St. Luke in Scripture, but from a passage in the 
Epistle to the Colossians, we infer that he had been bred a physician. 
He is also stated, by ecclesiastical writers, to have practised as a painter, 
and some ancient pictures of the Virgin, still extant, are ascribed to his 
pencil. In consequence of this belief, which, however, rests on very 
uncertain foundations, St. Luke has been regarded as the patron of 
painters and the fine arts. The mulatto or black Madonnas, which go 
by St. Luke's name, were not painted by him, but by Signor Luco, who 
flourished in the fifteenth century ; whose works were, by a " pious 
fraud " of the monks, attributed to the saint, as more likely to com- 
mand the reverence of the ignorant, who were also taught to regard 
the pictures as " miraculous." (See the Private Diary of the Duke of 
Buckingham^) 

In May, 1868, Sir George Bowyer sent to the Archaeological In- 
stitute a photograph of the picture of our Blessed Lady of Philermos, 
attributed to St. Luke, and removed from Malta to St. Petersburg by 
the Emperor of Russia on its surrender to the French Republic. This 
was one of the Black Madonnas which it was the fashion for a certain 
period to paint. Its attribution, with that of other pictures, to St. Luke 
the Evangelist, was owing to there having been a famous artist in the 
eleventh century named Luke. The example shown was probably of 
the twelfth or thirteenth century ; a point which caused some discussion, 
in the course of which Mr. Waller read an extract from Molanus, to 
show that St. Luke was not considered a painter. Raphael's famous 
picture of Luke painting the portrait of the Virgin, has, doubtless, 
fostered the above popular error. He is commonly represented in a 
seated position, writing or painting, whilst behind him appears the 
head of an ox, frequently winged. The Academy of St. Luke, at 
Rome, for painters and sculptors, would also foster the error. St. Luke 
would be more appropriately the patron of hospitals, from his having 
been bred a physician. 



FRIAR BACON S BRAZEN HEAD. 

This widely-known legend has little to do with the veritable history 
of Roger or Friar Bacon, the greatest of English philosophers before 
the time of his celebrated namesake ; though he, Roger Bacon, is more 
popularly known by this fictitious name than by his real merit. In a 
rare tract, entitled The Famous Historie of Friar Bacon, 4.to, London, 
1652, it is pretended he discovered, "after great study,' that if he 
could succeed in making a head of brass, which should speak, and hear 
it when it spoke, he might be able to surround all England with a wall 

E 



^0 COLUMBUS AND THE EGG. 

of brass. By the assistance of Friar Bungay, and a devil likewise called 
into the consultation, Bacon accomplished his object, but with this draw- 
back — the head, when finished, was warranted to speak in the course of 
one month ; but it was quite uncertain when ; and if they heard it not 
before it had done speaking, all their labour would be lost. After watch- 
ing for three weeks, fatigue got the mastery over them, and Bacon set 
his man Miles to watch, with strict injunctions to awake them if the 
head should speak. The fellow heard the head at the end of one half- 
hour say, " Time is ;" at the end of another, "Time was;" and at the end 
of another half-hour, " Time's past;" when down it fell with a tremen- 
dous crash, but the blockhead of a servant thought that his master 
would be angry if he disturbed him for such trifles ! "And hereof 
came it," says the excellent Robert Recorde, "that fryer Bacon was 
accompted so greate a necromancier, whiche never used that arte (by 
any conjecture that I can finde), but was in geometrie and other mathe- 
maticall sciences so experte that he coulde doe by them suche thynges 
as were wonderful in the sight of most people." 

Bacon died at Oxford in 1292, where existed, nearly until our own 
times, a traditional memorial of " the wonderful doctor," as he was 
styled by some of his contemporaries. On Grandpont, or the Old 
Folly Bridge, at the southern entrance into Oxford, stood a tower called 
" Friar Bacon's Study," from a belief that the philosopher was accus- 
tomed to ascend this building in the night, and " study the stars." It 
was entirely demolished in 1778. Of the bridge, Wood says: "No 
record can resolve its precise beginning." 

"The mind of Roger Bacon," says Hallam, "was strangely com- 
pounded of almost prophetic gleams of the future course of science, 
and the best principles of the inductive philosophy, with more than a 
sacred credulity in the superstitions of his own time. Some have deemed 
him overrated by the nationality of the English. But if we have some- 
times given him credit for the discoveries to which he had only borne 
testimony, there can be no doubt of the originality of his genius." He 
bears a singular resemblance to Francis Bacon, not only in the character 
of his philosophy, but in several coincidences of expression ; and the 
latter has even been charged with having borrowed much from Roger 
Bacon without having acknowledged his obligations. 



COLUMBUS AND THE EGG. 

Among the popular errors of the day is the story of Columbus, who, 
finding it impossible to make an egg stand on its end, crushed in the 
basis, and thus made it stand. The goldfish of Charles II. was accepted 
as imponderable by many wise heads without experiment (if, indeed, it 
ever had a being), and the story of Columbus and the egg is supposed 
to be based on the physical axiom that it is impossible to make an egg 
stand on its end. Yet, five minutes' careful balancing will convince any 
dexterous experimenter that an egg may be made to stand, and remain 
balanced on its end, without breaking the shell. All that is required is 



WILLIAM TELL: A FABLE. ^ 

steadiness of hand, and perhaps a little patience. And M. Delepierre 
mentions that " the fable of the egg that he is said to have broken, in order 
to make it stand upright, has been disproved by M. de Humboldt, in 
his Ex amen Critique de VHistoire de la Geographie." Hogarth, it will be 
recollected, has made " Columbus and the Egg" the subject of one of 
his admirable illustrative prints. 

Now, if Vasari is to be credited, the Florentine architect, Brunelleschi, 
many years before Columbus was born, performed the egg feat relative 
to his intended cupola for the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore, in 
Florence. The other architects desired that Filippo should explain his 
purpose minutely, and show his model, as they had done theirs. This 
he would not do, but proposed to all the masters, foreigners and com- 
patriots, that he who could make an egg stand upright on a piece of 
smooth marble should be appointed to build the cupola, since in doing 
that his genius should be made manifest. They took an egg accordingly, 
and all those masters did their best to make it stand upright, but none 
discovered the method of doing so. Wherefore, Filippo being told that 
he might make it stand himself, took it daintily into his hand, gave the 
end of it a blow on the plane of the marble, and made it stand upright. 
Beholding this, the artists loudly protested, exclaiming that they could 
all have done the same ; but Filippo replied, laughing, that they might 
also know how to construct the cupola if they had seen the model and 
the design. This occurred about a.d. ^420. 



WILLIAM TELL: A FABLE. 

Delepierre shows there to be four different views existing of this 
tradition of William Tell. 1. The authenticity of the legend, in all its 
details, as it is believed in the canton of Uri. 2. The existence of Tell, 
his refusal to do homage to the hat, his voyage on the lake, and the 
tragical end of Gessler, but rejects the story of the apple. 3. William 
Tell is believed to have existed, and to have made himself remarkable by 
some daring exploit ; but this exploit was not connected with the plans 
of the conspirators, and consequently exercised no influence over the 
formation of the Swiss Confederation. 4. The tradition of William 
Tell, a mere fable, an after-thought, unworthy of being inserted in any 
history of Switzerland. In 1760 Uriel Frendenberger created a terrible 
disturbance in Berne by publishing a small volume in Latin, entitled 
William Tell; a Danish Fable. The canton of Uri condemned the 
author to be burned with his book. In 1727 Isaac Christ. Iselin, in his 
large historical dictionary, doubted the story, because Olaus Magnus 
has related the same adventure of a certain Toko, in the reign of Harold, 
King of Denmark. The two stories are so similar that one is supposed 
to have been copied from the other. 

In 1840 M. Hausser, in answer to a proposition from the University 
of Heidelberg, obtained a prize for his essay, showing — 1. There is 
nothing to justify the historical importance that is commonly attached 
to William Tell. He has no right to the title of Deliverer of Sv/itzer- 

e 2 



52 THE TULIPOMANIA. 

land, seeing that he took no active part in the freedom of Waldstatter. 
2. The existence of a Swiss named William Tell, is without doubt, but 
not in any way connected with the history of the Confederation. 3. The 
tradition, as preserved in ballads and chronicles, is a pure invention : the 
apple shot from the head of the child is of Scandinavian origin. (See 
Hiseley's Recherches Critiques, 1843.) Ideler (Berlin, 1836). says: — 
" There exists no record of incontestable authenticity referring to the 
romantic incident of Tell's life. The chapel near Fliielen, on the borders 
of the lake, was only constructed in 1388; the chapel at Burglen, on 
the spot where Tell's house formerly stood, dates back to the same 
time ; and there is no written document to prove that they were built 
to commemorate any share taken by Tell in the emancipation of Swit- 
zerland. The stone fountain at Altdorf, which bore the name of Tell, 
and above which was seen the statue of Tell, and of his son with an 
apple placed upon his head, was only constructed in 1786, when the 
tradition had already been invalidated by critical researches. The foun- 
tain was taken down in t86i. Tell's lime-tree in the market-place at 
Altdorf, and his crossbow, preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, are not 
more valid proof than the pieces of the true cross which are exhibited in 
a thousand places. In conclusion, M. Delepierre relates the corresponding 
apple legends. Altogether this is one of the most interesting of his 
Historical Difficulties. 

» 

THE TULIPOMANIA. 
With the marvels of this madness, as told in books of wonders, the 
world is tolerably familiar. The gardens of Haarlem are still famous 
for their luxuriant flowers ; but the trade in tulips is not earned on as 
in the -days of the Tulipomania, and too florins is now a very large sum 
for a root. Beckmann states, on Dutch authorities, that 400 perits in 
weight (something less than a grain), of the bulb of a tulip named 
Admiral Leifken, cost 4400 florins ; and 200 of another, named Semper 
Augustus, 2000 florins. Of this last, he tells us, it once happened there 
were only two roots to be had, the one at Amsterdam, the other at 
Haarlem ; and that, for one of these, were offered 4600 florins, a new 
carriage, two grey horses, and a complete set of harness ; and that 
another person offered 1 2 acres of land. It is almost impossible to give 
credence to such madness. The real truth of the story is that these tulip 
roots <were never bought or sold, but they became the medium of a 
systematized species of gambling. The bulbs, and their division into perits, 
became like the different stocks in our public funds, and were bought 
and sold at different prices from day to day, the parties settling their 
amount at fixed periods, the innocent tulips all the while never once 
appearing in the transaction. " Before the tulip mania was over," says 
Beckmann, " more roots were sold and purchased, bespoke and pro- 
mised to be delivered, than in all probability were to be found in the 
gardens of Holland ; and when Semper Augustus was not to be had 
anywhere, which happened twice, no species perhaps was oftener pur- 
chased and sold." This kind of sheer gambling reached at length to 



THE LABYRINTH OF CRETE. 53 

such a height that the Government found it necessary to interfere and 
put a stop to it. Still, the enormous prices that were actually given for 
real tulip-bulbs of particular kinds, formed but a small fraction of the 
extent to which the mercantile transactions in this gaudy flower were 
carried. 



THE NINE WORTHIES. 

These are famous personages, often alluded to, and classed together 
rather in an arbitrary manner, like the Seven Wonders of the 
World, &c. 

The number have been thus counted up as the Nine Worthies of the 
World by Richard Burton, in a book published in 16S7 :— 

Si. Hector, son of Priam. 
2. Alexander the Great. 
3. Julius Cassar. 
( 4. Joshua, conqueror of Canaan. 
Three Jews . . < 5. David, king of Israel. 
( 6. Judas Maccabaeus. 
/ ( 7. Arthur, king of Britain. 
Three Christians . 1 8. Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. 
( 9. Godfrey of Bullen [Bouillon]. 

London had also Nine Worthies of her own, according to a pamphlet 
by Richard Johnson, author of the famous History of the Seven Cham- 
pions. These worthies are: 1. Sir William Walworth, fishmonger; 
2. Sir Henry Pritchard, vintner; 3. Sir William Sevenoake, grocer; 
4. Sir Thomas White, merchant-tailor ; 5. Sir John Bonham, mercer ; 
6. Sir Christopher Croker, vintner ; 7. Sir John Hawkwood, merchant- 
tailor; 8. Sir Hugh Calvert, silk-weaver; 9. Sir Henry Maleverer, 
grocer. Sir Thomas White seems to have been the only quite peace- 
able worthy among them, whose fame lives in St. John's College, 
Oxford, and Merchant Taylors' School, London, which school he 
founded. 

From the fame of these personages, Butler formed his curious title of 
Nine-worthiness, meaning, it is presumed, that his hero (Hudibras) 
was equal in valour to any or all of the nine. 



THE LABYRINTH OF CRETE. 

^he Labyrinth of Crete is noticed by most ot the ancient authors 
who have treated of the fabled history of the Minotaur or of Crete. 
Homer is, however, silent upon it, unless the passage in the Iliad, 
book 2, has reference to it, as some think. The early coins of Gnossus, 
indeed, represent it ; but they cannot date further back than the 6th or 
7th century B.C., if so early, and were consequently struck when only 
the tradition existed of such a labyrinth ; and how vague even then was 
the idea of this labyrinth is shown by the varied representations of it 



54 COMMON ORIGIN OF POPULAR FICTIONS. 

upon these Cretan coins — some representing its passages in circular con- 
volutions, others square, and also different in coins of different times. 
But Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, gives a more natural explana- 
tion of the object of the Labyrinth than the story of the mythical 
Minotaur, and says it was a prison for the tributary youths of Athens. 

That there was, therefore, something of a labyrinth, which 

might serve as a foundation for that which was attributed to the great 
master of art, Dsedalus, is thus more than simply probable. " What, 
then, do we find in Crete to explain it ? Is there a labyrinth of any 
kind ?" is the natural inquiry. There is ; yet not at Gnossus, but at 
Gortyna ; and not a building, but a subterranean excavation resembling 
a quarry, or more properly the galleries of a mine, and penetrating hori- 
zontally, in labyrinthine courses, no one knows how far, into one of the 
roots of Mount Ida lying behind Gortyna, and in which I myself spent 
nearly two hours in tracing some of its courses, as far as they are now 
penetrable ; for the Cretans have long since walled or stopped up its 
inner and unknown extremes, so as not to be lost in its inner intricacies. 
— Captain Spratt's Crete. 

♦ 

THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES. 

Rhodes was famous of old for its brazen colossal statue, the remains 
of whose pedestal Mr. Newton thinks he has discovered. Everybody is 
supposed to know, yet somebody may be glad to be reminded, that the 
Colossus was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was 105 feet 
high, and was thrown down by an earthquake B.C. 224. In the seventh 
century the Saracens sold it as old brass to a Jew for 36,000/. 

Dr. C. F. Liiders, professor at the Johanneum at Hamburg, has pub- 
lished a critical and historical treatise on the Colossus. According to 
his researches, this wonder of the world is reduced to nothing more than 
a colossal statue, standing on terra firma, like the Bavaria at Munich, 
but near the harbour, and dedicated to Phoebus Apollo. He insists 
upon it that its standing open-legged across the mouth of the harbour, 
and being used as a lighthouse, is a pure invention, and an emanation 
of fancy from later writers. 

Rhodes is renowned for its occupation in the Middle Ages by the 
Knights of St. John, numerous traces of whose handiwork still exist. 
No European city can show a street so little changed since the 15th cen- 
tury as the Strada dei Cavalieri. 



COMMON ORIGIN OF POPULAR FICTIONS. 

Dr. Leyden is inclined to connect the history of popular narrative with 
ancient romance, as he has overlooked the mythological basis oi the sys- 
tem. " In the repetition of an unskilful reciter," says the Doctor, " the 
metrical romance or fabliau seems often to have degenerated into a 
popular story ; and it is a curious fact that the subjects of some of the 
popular stories which I have heard repeated in Scotland, do not difter 



STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. $$ 

essentially from those of some of the ancient Norman fabliaux, presented 
to the public in an elegant form by Le Grand. Thus, when I first 
perused the fabliaux of the ' Poor Scholar,' the ' Three Thieves,' and the 
' Sexton of China,' I was surprised to recognise the popular stories I had 
often heard repeated in infancy ; and which I had often repeated myself 
when the song or the tale repeated by turns, amused the tedious 
evening of winter. From this circumstance I am inclined to think that 
many of the Scottish popular stories may have been common to the 
Norman- French. Whether these tales be derived immediately from the 
French during their long and intimate intercourse with the Scottish 
nation, or whether both nations borrowed them from the Celtic, may 
admit of some doubt." 

In ascribing a common origin to the popular fictions of our island and 
the Continent, we cannot be far from the truth ; but since the people of 
England and the Scottish Lowlands are undoubtedly offsets and grafts 
from the Teutonic stock, it is probable that our popular fables are chiefly 
of Teutonic origin. These idle stories boast a higher antiquity than 
romances and poems of much greater pretensions. Our proud baronial 
families can trace their line only up to Battle Abbey Roll; whilst the 
yeomen and franklins of Essex and Sussex and Kent, the Spongs and the 
Pungs, and the Wapshotts and the Eppses, bear in their names the evi- 
dence of their descent from the Saxon and Danish conquerors of Bri- 
tain ; and even the knights of the romance of the Round Table, in their 
present forms, are mere striplings when compared to the acquaintances 
of our early childhood, who troop along by the side of the go-cart, and 
help to rock the cradle. Jack, commonly called the Giant Killer, and 
Thomas Thumb landed in England from the very same keels and war- 
ships which conveyed Hengist and Horsa, and Ebba the Saxon. 



THE STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. 

In Jack's memoirs may be traced indubitable resemblances to the 
fictions of the Edda. Jack, as we are told, having got a little money, 
travelled into Flintshire, and came to a large house in a lonesome place ; 
here, by reason of his present necessity, he took courage to knock at the 
gate, when, to his amazement, there came forth a monstrous Giant with 
two heads, yet he did not seem so fiery as the former Giants, for he was 
a Welsh Giant, rendered less fiery than he would naturally have been, 
in consequence of " breakfasting," as the story says, " on a great bowl of 
hasty pudding," instead of keeping to the warm, invigorating national 
diet, toasted cheese. To this low feeding we also attribute the want of 
sagacity which enabled Jack " to outwit him," notwithstanding his two 
heads. The history states that Jack undressed himself, and as the Giant 
was walking towards another apartment, Jack heard him say to him- 
self— 

Though here you lodge with me this night, 

You shall not see the morning light, 

My club shall dash your brains out quite. 



$6 STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. 

" Say you so," says Jack ; "is that one of your Welsh tricks ? I hope 
to be as cunning as you." Then, getting out of bed, he found a thick 
billet, and laid it in the bed in his stead, and hid himself in a dark cor- 
ner of the room. In the dead of the night came the Giant with his 
club, and struck several blows with his club on the bed where Jack had 
laid the billet, and then returned to his own room, supposing that " he had 
broken all Jack's bones." In the morning early, came Jack to thank 
him for his lodging. " Oh !" said the Giant, " how have you rested ? 
did you see anything last night ?" "No," said Jack, "but a rat gave 
me three or four slaps with his tail." 

Although the locus in quo is placed in Flintshire by the English 
writer, we find a parallel in the device practised by the Giant Skrimner, 
when he and Thor journeyed to Skrimner's Castle of Utgaard, as related 
in the Edda of Snorro. At midnight, the mighty son of earth laid him- 
self to sleep beneath an oak, and snored aloud. Thor, the giant-killer, 
resolved to rid himself of his unsuspicious companion, and struck him 
with his tremendous hammer. " Hath a leaf fallen upon me from the 
tree f ' exclaimed the awakened Giant. The Giant soon slept again, 
and " snored, " the Edda says, " as loudly as if it had thundered in the 
forest." Thor struck the Giant again, and, as he thought, the hammer 
made a mortal indentation in his forehead. "What is the matter? 1 ' 
quoth Skrimner ; "hath an acorn fallen on my headT A third time 
the potent Giant snored, and a third time did the hammer descend 
"with huge two-handed sway," and with such force that Thor believed 
the iron had buried itself in Skrimner's temple. " Methinks" quoth 
Skrimner, rubbing his cheek, "some moss has fallen on my face." Thor 
might be well amazed at the escape of the Giant, but Skrimner, acting 
exactly like Jack, had outwitted his enemy by placing an immense rock 
on the leafy couch where Thor supposed he was sleeping, and which 
received the blows of the hammer in his stead. 

Next, we have, in the fictions of the North and East, Jack's robbery of 
his couiii, a Giant with three heads, and who would beat five hundred 
men in armour. Jack terrified his three-headed cousin out of all his 
wits, by telling him that the king's son was coming. The Giant hid 
himself in a large vault underground ; and in the morning, when Jack 
let his cousin out, the Giant asked what he would give him for his 
care, seeing that his castle was not demolished. " Why," answered 
Jack, " I desire nothing but your old rusty sword, the coat in the closet, 
and the cap and the shoes which you keep at the bed's-head." " With 
all my heart," said the Giant, " and be sure to keep them for my sake, 
for they are things of excellent use : the coat will keep you invisible, 
the cap will furnish you with knowledge, the sword cuts asunder what- 
ever you strike, and the shoes are of extraordinary swiftness?' These 
wonderful articles have been stolen out of the Great Northern treasury. 
The coat is the magic garment known in ancient German by the 
equivalent denomination of the " Nebel Kappe," or cloud cloak, fabled to 
belong to King Alberich, and the other dwarfs of the Teutonic cycle of 
romance, who, clad therein, could walk invisible. To them also belongs 
the Tarn hat, or hat of darkness, possessing the same virtue. Veleut, 



STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. 57 

the cunning smith of the Edda of Saemund, wrought Jack's " sword 
of sharpness," which, in the Wilkina Saga bears the name of Balmung. 
So keen was its edge, that when Veleut cleft his rival iEmilius through 
the middle with the wondrous weapon, it merely seemed to yEmilius as 
though cold water had glided down him. "Shake thyself," said Veleut. 
iEmilius shook himself, and fell dead into two halves, one on each side 
of his chair. That the story of Veleut's skill was known in this country 
is evinced by the Auchinleck text of the Geste of King Horn, where he 
is called Weland. 

Jack's shoes of swiftness were once worn by Loke when he escaped 
from Valhalla. In the Calmuck romance of Ssidi Kur, the Chan steals 
a similar pair of seven-league boots from the Tchadkurrs, or evil spirits, 
by means of the cap which made him invisible, which he won from 
certain quarrelling children, or dwarfs, whom he encounters in the 
middle of a forest. Are these merely incidental coincidences between 
the superstitions and fictions of the followers of Buddha, and those of 
Odin? 

In the history of Jack and the Bean Stalk, the consistency of the 
character is still finely preserved. The awful distich put into the mouth 
of the Jette or Ettin, the principal agent in this romance, 
Snouk but, snouk ben, 
I find the smell of earthly men, 
is scarcely inferior to the " fee-faw-fum " of the keen-scented anthropo- 
phaginian of the other. The bean-stalk, " the top whereof, when Jack 
looked upwards he could not discern, as it appeared lost in the clouds," 
has grown in fanciful imitation of the ash Tadraid, reaching, according 
to the Edda, from hell to heaven. As to the beautiful harp, which 
" played of its own accord," and which Jack stole from the Giant, we 
must find a parallel for it in the wonderful harp made of the breast-bone 
of the King's daughter, and which sang so sweetly to the miller, " Bin- 
norie, oh, Binnorie," and in old Dunstan's harp, which sounded without 
hands, when hanging in the vale. 

Most of these Giants rest upon good romance authority; or, to 
speak more correctly, Jack's history is a popular and degraded version 
of the traditions upon which our earliest romances are founded. " The 
Mount of Cornwall," which was kept by a large and monstrous 
Giant, is St. Michael's Mount ; and the Giant Cormoran, whom Jack 
despatched there, and who was eighteen feet high, and about three yards 
round, is the same who figures in the romance of Tristem. It was by 
killing this Cormoran (the Corinseus, probably, of Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
and the Brut), that Jack acquired his triumphal epithet of the Giant- 
killer. Care should be taken not to confound "the History of Jack and 
the Giants," with "The History of the Giants." These works differ 
essentially in merit ; and although the latter begins with the history of 
Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, yet the adventures contained 
in the remainder of the work, and particularly all those which relate to 
the Giants Trapsaca and Trandello, are, as the Irish Bishop observed of 
Gullivers Travels, exceedingly incredible. — Abridged from the Quar- 
terly Review, No. 41. 



58 STORY OF TOM THUMB. 



THE STORY OF TOM HICKATHRIFT. 

Hearne has identified Sir Thomas Hickathrift, "the famous cham- 
pion," with the far less celebrated Sir Frederick de Tylney, Baron of 
Tylney, in Norfolk, the ancestor of the Tylney family, who was killed 
at Aeon, in Syria, in the reign of Richard Cceur de Lion : " Hycophric, 
or Hy cot hr if t" as the mister- wight observes, "being a corruption of 
Frederick;" — Hearne having here adopted a hint from LeNeve, of the 
College of Arms. Their conjectures, however, accord but slightly with 
the traditions given by the accurate Spelman, in his Icenia. From 
the most remote antiquity the fables and achievements of Hickifric have 
been obstinately credited by the inhabitants of the township of Tylney. 
" Hickifric " is venerated by them as the asserter of the rights and 
liberties of their ancestors. The "monstrous giant " who guarded the 
March, was, in truth, no other than the tyrannical lord of the manor, 
who attempted to keep his copy-holders out of the common field, 
called Tylney Smeeth ; but who was driven away, with his retainers, by 
the prowess of Tom, armed with only his axletree and cart-wheel. 
Spelman tells the story in good Latin. 

The pranks which Tom performed when his "natural strength, which 
exceeded twenty common men," became manifest, were correctly 
Scandinavian. Similar were the achievements of the great northern 
champion, Greter, when he kept geese upon the common, as told in his 
Saga. Tom's youth retraces the tales of the prowess of the youthful 
Siegfrid, detailed in the Niflunga Saga, and in the Book of Heroes. The 
supposed axtletree, with the superincumbent wheel, was represented on 
"Hycothrift's "grave-stone, in Tylney churchyard, in the shape of a 
cross. This is the form in which all the Runic monuments represent the 
celebrated hammer, or thunderbolt of the son of Odin, which shattered the 
skulls and scattered the brains of so many luckless giants. How far 
this surmise may be supported by Tom's skill in throwing the hammer, 
we will not pretend to decide. The common people have a faculty of 
seeing whatever they choose to believe, and of refusing to see things in 
which they disbelieve. It may, therefore, be supposed that the rude 
sculpture which the Tylneyites used to call the offensive and defensive 
arms of their champion, was nothing more than a cross, of which the 
upper part is inscribed in a circle, a figure often found on ancient 
sepulchres. 



THE STORY OF TOM THUMB. 

Tom Hearne would almost have sworn that Tom Thumb, the fairy 
knight, was " King Edgar's page." On ballad authority, we learn that 
" Tomalyn was a Scotsman born." Now Tom Hearne and the ballad 
are both in the wrong ; for Tomaline, otherwise Tamlane, is no other 
than Tom Thumb himself, who was originally a dwarf or droergar of 
Scandinavian descent, being the Thum Lin — i.e., Little Thumb — of the 



STORY OF TOM THUMB. 59 

Northmen. Drayton, who introduces both these heroes in his Nym- 
pbidia, seems to have suspected their identity. 

The German " Daumerling," that is, little Thumb, is degraded to the 
son of a tailor ; he has not much in common with Tom Thumb the 
Great, except the misfortune of being swallowed by the dun cow, 
which took place in Germany, just as it did in England.* This is a 
traditionary story of the Germans ; but there is a little book in the 
Danish language, analysed by Professor Nierup, of the University of 
Copenhagen, who censures it, and perhaps with some degree of justice, 
as " a very childish history." It treats of " Swain Tomling, a man no 
bigger than a thumb, who would be married to a woman three ells and 
three-quarters long." The Danish title-page enumerates other of Tom- 
ling's adventures which are not found in the " History of his Mar- 
vellous Acts of Manhood," as preserved in England ; the manhood, 
however, which emboldened the Swain to venture on a wife of " three ells 
and three-quarters" in length, is yet commemorated in the ancient 
rhyme which begins " I had a little husband no bigger than my thumb." 

According to popular tradition, Tom Thumb died at Lincoln, which 
it may be recollected was one of the five Danish towns of England ; 
we do not, however, therefore, intend to insist that the story was handed 
down by the northern invaders. There was a little blue flag-stone in 
the pavement of the Minster "which was shown as Tom Thumb's 
monument, and the country-folks never failed to marvel at it when 
they came to church on the Assize-Sunday : but during some of the 
modern repairs which have been inflicted on that venerable building, 
the flag-stone has been displaced and lost, to the great discomfiture of 
the holiday visitor. 

In the Bodleian Library is a work with this title : " Tom Thumb, 
his Life and Death, wherein is declared many maruailous acts of man- 
hood, full of wonder and strange merriments. Which little Knight 
lived in King Arthur's time, and famous in the Court of Great 
Brittaine. London: Printed for John Wright, 1630." It begins thus: 

In Arthur's court, Tom Thumbe did liue, 

A man of mickle might, 
The best of all the Table Round, 

And eke a doughty knight. 

His stature but an inch in height, 

Or quarter of a span : 
Then thinke you not this little knight 

Was prou'd a valiant man ? 



* Tom Thumb, it is conjectured, if the truth should be discovered, would be 
found to be a mythological personage. His adventure bears a near analogy to 
the right of adoption into the Brahminical order, a ceremony which still exists 
in India, and to which the Rajah of Tanjore submitted many years ago. In 
Dubois's work there is an account of a diminutive deity, whose person and cha- 
racter are analogous to those of Tom Thumb. He, too, was not originally a 
Brahmin, but became one by adoption, like some of the worthies in the Ra- 
in ayana. Compare the multiplicity of Tom Thumb's metamorphoses with those 
of Taliesin, as quoted by Davies, we shall then see that this diminutive per- 



<5o LEGEND OF THE CROSS. 

The prose history of Tom Thumb is manufactured from the ballad ; 
and by the introduction of the fairy queen at his birth, and certain 
poetical touches which it yet exhibits, we are led to suppose that it is a 
rifacciamento of an earlier and better original. One of Tom's sports 
deserves note : it is when, in order to be revenged on his playmates, he 

took in pleasant game 
Black pots and glasses which he hung 
Upon a bright sunbeam. 

The other boys to do the same, 

In pieces broke them quite ; 

For which they were most soundly whipt, 

At which he laught outright. 

1 his " pleasant game " is borrowed from the pseudo-hagiography of 
the Middle Ages. It is found not only in one of the spurious Gospels, 
but also in the Legend of St. Columbanus, who, as we are told, per- 
formed a similar miracle by hanging his garments on a sunbeam. 



LEGEND OF THE CROSS* 

The Rev. Baring Gould, in the second series of his Curious Myths of the 
Middle Ages, considers Thor's hammer or fylfot, a cross cramponnee, one of 
the earlier forms of the Cross, through which, according to the Discipline 
of the Secret, it passed more or less dissembled before it could be exhi- 
bited openly— that is, about the fourth or fifth century— in places remote 
from Rome. In the picture erected by Constantine, in the Palatine, we 
see the Knight with the Cross upon his helmet, warring with a dragon, 
as related by Eusebius. Mr. Gould finds the material origin of the use 
of the Cross before Christianity in the use of two sticks used for light- 
ing fire, and discovers that under every system it was a symbol of life 
and regeneration by water, " a portion of the primeval religion, traces 
of which exist over the. whole world, among every people, trust in the 
Cross, a part of the ancient faith which taught men to believe in a Trinity, 
in a war in Heaven, a Paradise from which man fell, a Flood, and a 
Babel, a faith which was deeply impressed with a conviction that a 
Virgin should conceive and bear a Son, that the Dragon's head should be 
bruised, and that through shedding of blood should come remission. 
The shadow of the Cross was cast back into the night of ages." 



sonage is a slender but distinct thread of communication between the Brah- 
minical and Druidical superstitions. Even independent of the analogy between 
his transformations and those of Taliesin, his station in the court of King 
Arthur (evidently the mythological Arthur), mark him as a person of the 
highest fabulous antiquity in this island ; while the adventure of the cow, to 
which there is nothing analogous in Celtic mythology, appears to connect him 
with India. 

* See the History of the Holy Cross, Curiosities of History, pp. 5—7. 



6i 



Gnat ffitaitte itm fxitfe Cmxaes* 




N wandering through the highways and byeways of History, 
how curious it is to seek out the springs which have set the 
world in motion, and to read how the most trivial circum- 
stances have occasioned the subversion of empires, and erected 
new ones in their stead ; in a word, how the most important events fre- 
quently came to pass from very inconsiderable causes. A few instances, 
though at random strung, may be interesting. 

The story of Semiramis shall be our first instance. How this beau- 
tiful heroine, by her charms and her valour, won the heart and crown of 
Ninus King of Assyria, history doth tell. Enamoured of his _ bride, 
one unlucky morning, he resolved on the pleasure of seeing all Asia sub- 
Set to the will of one who had possession ot his heart : he, therefore 
gave her absolute authority for the space of one day, _ and ordered all 
his subjects to execute the commands of Semiramis. A wise and 
prudent woman would, doubtless, have made use of this frolic to tell 
Ninus of his faults; not so, however, Semiramis: she consulted her 
ambition and her cruelty, for as soon as Ninus had placed this power in 
her hands, she employed it in causing him to be ^^smated. The 
traitors whom she employed for this vile purpose, reported that the king 
had given up the reins of the empire to his wife because ne round his 
end approaching; this the people believed, and readily acknowledged 
SemiTamis as their sovereign: How she used her newly-acqurred power 
by building the city of Babylon, employing two millions ot men ; how 
she extended the Assyrian empire by levelling mountains turning the 
course of rivers, and building vast cities ; and how she tailed in hei at- 
tempted conquest of India, and was, in consequence, privately put to 
deTth by her son Ninias, history doth narrate ; we have told enough to 
prove how a little cause produced a great effect. 

P "Inmost naval fights," says Sir Thomas Browne, << some notable 
advantage, error, or unexpected occurrence hath determined the victory 
The ereat fleet of Xerxes was overthrown by the disadvantage of a 
narrow plain for battle. In the encounter of Duiilius, the Roman, 
with the Carthaginian fleet, a new invention of the iron .corvt (beak 
to the ships), made a decision of the battle on the Roman side. 
The unexpected falling off of the galleys of Cleopatra to* -the 
battle of Actium. Even in the battle of Lepanto, if Ca ^ co ^ 
had given the Turks orders not to narrow on account or the 
number of the Christian galleys, they had in all probability ^ declmed 
the adventure of a battle ; and even when they came to fight the un- 
known force, an advantage of the eight Venetian galhasses gave the 

m T r ^tweS S'^ to theshipsof Marcellus at aconsider- 



62 GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 

able distance, by burning-glasses ; yet, this philosopher, who had 
offered to move the world with a lever, was taken off in a very unseemly 
manner ; for he was killed by a soldier who knew him not, while intent 
upon some geometrical figures, which he had drawn upon the sand. 

Antoninus Commodus, the Roman Emperor, of a very different 
stamp, was killed through a child playing with a paper which he had 
found in the emperor's chamber : the little boy had been reared in the 
palace, had followed Commodus into his apartment, and staying there 
after his departure, took up a paper, and went out of doors, playing with 
it as he walked through the streets ; the child was met by a woman, 
who, taking the document out of his hand, found it to be the sentence 
for her own death, as well as some other persons ; they together saved 
their own lives by first poisoning, and then strangling the imperial 
tyrant. 

Belisarius, one of the greatest captains in history, after having con- 
quered the Persians, and subdued Africa and Italy, was deprived of all 
his honours and dignities for having very properly reproached his 
worthless wife. She being a confidante of the Empress, persuaded the 
latter to get up a charge of revolt against Belisarius, and then instigated 
Justinian to confiscate the soldier's estate and goods, and degrade him. 
" Before Belisarius's disgrace," says the account, somewhat naively, 
" every person thought it an honour to be in his company; but, after 
his misfortune, none dared to speak to him, compassionate him, or even 
mention his name. True friends are rarely met with among the great." 

Placidia, the mother of Valentinian III., Emperor of the West, 
brought up her daughter, Honoria, so severely, that the young princess, 
who was a forward vixen, to get rid of the maternal restraint, wrote a 
letter to Attila, King of the Huns, offering him her hand, and as a pledge 
of her faith, sent him half a ring. Attila, who only wanted a pretext 
for ravaging the West, took advantage of Honoria's offer, and wrote to 
the Emperor Valentinian, that Honoria was his wife ; desired that he 
would send her to him, and likewise cede to him the moiety of the 
empire which was to be her portion. Valentinian, of course, refused 
these unreasonable demands, which so enraged Attila, that he ravaged 
all Gaul and Italy, and drove some of the inhabitants of the latter to the 
point of the Adriatic Gulf, where they built themselves cottages, and 
thus commenced the city of Venice. 

Valentinian III. was a reckless gambler, and whilst Rome was falling 
to pieces for the second time, this emperor was playing at dice with his 
ministers, and cheating them whenever he could ; and Maximus pre- 
served the friendship of this weak emperor only by gaming with him. 
One day, when they had both played very deeply, Maximus lost a con- 
siderable sum ; and, as he had not the amount with him, the emperor 
compelled him to leave his ring with him as security. Through the base 
use which Valentinian made ot the ring, he was assassinated in a con- 
spiracy formed by Maximus, who succeeded to the imperial throne, and 
then compelled Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, to accept his hand. 
She soon became disgusted at his cruelty, and invited the Vandals from 
Africa to come to her aid ; Genseric caught at this opportunity of 



GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 63 

gratifying the desire he had of pillaging Italy : he soon landed with a 
large army, advanced to Rome, and entered the city sword in hand and 
pillaged it for fourteen days. He then returned to Carthage, carrying 
with him the Empress Eudoxia, and the principal personages of Rome, 
loaded with chains; in the meantime, the people, enraged at Maximus, 
tore him to pieces. Thus we see how the inability of a gambler to pay 
a loss immediately led to the sacking of the mistress of the world. 

Many a war has been caused by the most trifling circumstance : here 
is an instance. About the middle of the thirteenth century, the two 
republics of Genoa and Venice were at the height of their prosperity, 
and had establishments in all parts of the world. They had a consider- 
able one in the city of Acre, on the coast of Syria, where they lived, 
subject to the laws of their respective countries, in perfect union. Their 
peace was, however, destroyed by a mere accident. One day, two 
porters, one a Genoese, and the other a Venetian, fell out about a bale 
of goods which was to be carried. From words they fell to blows ; the 
merchants, who at first gathered round them only by way of amuse- 
ment to see the battle, at length took part in the quarrel, each assisting 
his countryman ; and much blood was spilt on both sides. Complaints 
were soon carried to Genoa and Venice ; and the magistrates of each 
republic agreed that satisfaction should be made for the damage, by 
arbitration. The Genoese had the greater sum to pay, which they 
failed to do ; when the Venetians, by way of retribution, set on fire all 
the Genoese vessels which were then in the port of Acre. A sanguinary- 
battle ensued ; and the account says, Genoa and Venice resolved to 
support their merchants, and each fitted out a considerable fleet ; the 
Genoese were beaten, and compelled to abandon their settlements at; 
Acre, when the Venetians rased their houses and forts, and destroyed 
their magazines. The Genoese, irritated at their defeat, refitted their 
fleet, and every citizen offered to venture his person and fortune to 
revenge the outrage on his country. Meanwhile, the Venetians were 
equally active. The sea was covered with the ships of the rival repub- 
lics ; an engagement ensued, much blood was spilt, and many brave 
citizens were lost on both sides. In fine, after a long and cruel war, in 
which the two republics reaped nothing but shame, they made peace. 

Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, the Genoese became 
disgusted with the tyranny of their nobility, and sighed for change. The 
populace wished to elect an Abbe, whose authority should keep in check 
the captains, who were then the magistrates of the republic. A large 
and tumultuous meeting was accordingly held for the election of an Abbe 
of the People. The tumult increased, the people grew warm, and were 
about to proceed to blows ; when a shoemaker, who had just come out 
of a wine-house, mixed among the crowd, and getting upon an eleva- 
tion, emboldened by the fumes of wine, he bawled out, " Fellow-citizens, 
will you hearken to me ?" The Genoese, who were about to tear each 
other to pieces, burst into a hearty laugh. Some told the shoemaker to 
be quiet ; others encouraged him to speak ; but some threw dirt at him. 
The orator was nowise disconcerted, and shouted out : " You ought to 
nominate to the dignity of Abbe of the People an honest man ; and I 



{ 



64 GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 

know of none more so than Simon Boccanegra ; you ought to appoint 
him." Now, Simon was a good man, and was much esteemed both by 
the nobility and the people ; and he was, moreover, a man of good 
family. In short, his merits occasioned the people to attend to the 
shoemaker's recommendation : they elected Simon to be Abbe, and pre- 
sented him with a sword, as the mark of his dignity ; this, however, he 
returned, thanking the people for the goodwill they had shown him, but 
declining to be the first Abbe ; but, availing himself of the shoemaker's 
speech, he soon attained the lead in the republic. The people soon 
shouted, " Boccanegra, Lord of Genoa." The ambitious man then 
said he was ready to submit to the will of the people ; to be Abbe, or 
Lord, as they should ordain. This feigned humility pleased the people, 
as he had calculated : they shouted, " Lord Boccanegra !" and he was 
proclaimed perpetual Doge ! So that, the speech of a drunken shoe- 
maker caused the government of Genoa to be transferred from the 
nobles to the people, and enabled a single man to become sole master in 
the State. 

How the Genoese fell under the Austrian yoke we need not parti- 
cularize : they freed themselves from it through a very trifling occur- 
rence. On December 5, 1746, the Genoese were compelled to assist in 
drawing the artillery of their city, to aid their conquerors in an expedi- 
tion against Provence. In drawing one of the mortars through a 
narrow street, the carriage broke ; a crowd assembled, in the midst of 
which an Austrian officer struck with his cane a Genoese, who was 
slow at his work. The exasperated republican drew his knife, and 
stabbed the officer ; the whole crowd of Genoese became excited ; they 
broke open the armourers' shops, demolished the gates of the arsenal 
and of the powder magazines, fell upon the Austrians, and drove them 
out of the city ; the peasantry poured in, and joined the citizens, and 
thus they drove the enemy entirely from the state of Genoa. The 
Genoese celebrated, with great rejoicing, the recovery of their liberty : 
with great solemnity they drew through the streets the mortar which 
had occasioned this revolution. The Austrian army, destined for the 
expedition against Provence, marched to, and blocked up, Genoa ; but 
France sent the citizens aid— the Duke de Richelieu saved the republic, 
and the senate erected a statue in honour of him. 

A window was once the cause of a war, and very oddly, too. When 
the"palace of Trianon was building for Louis XIV., at the end of the 
park, at Versailles, the king, one day, went to inspect it, accompanied 
by Louvois, secretary at war, and superintendent of the building. The 
sovereign and the minister were walking together, when the king 
remarked that one of the windows was out of shape, and smaller than 
the rest ; this Louvois denied, asserting that he could not perceive the 
least difference. Louis had it measured, and finding that he was right 
in his observation, treated Louvois with contumely before the whole 
court. This so incensed the minister, that when he reached home he 
was heard to say he would find better employment for a sovereign than 
that of insulting his favourites : Louvois was as good as his word ; for 
by his haughtiness and ill-temper, he insulted the other leading powers 



GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 6- 

of Europe, and occasioned the sanguinary war, begun in 1688 by France 
against Holland, England, Germany, and Spain, the parties to the league 
of Augsburg (1686) and the Grand Alliance (1689). The Treaty of 
Ryswick, in 1697, terminated the war, by which Louis gained nothing; 
acknowledged William III. as lawful king of Great Britain, and 
engaged not to furnish any succour to the deposed king James II. 
Louis also consented to the re- establishment of the Duke of Lor- 
raine. The Treaty was signed in a house, the site of which is now 
marked by an obelisk. 

In the cathedral of Modena, in the marble tower called " La Ghir- 
landina," is kept the old worm-eaten wooden bucket which was the 
cause of the civil war, or rather affray, between the Modenese and 
Bolognese, in the time of Frederic II., Nov. 15, 1325. It was long 
suspended by the chain which fastened the gate of Bologna, through 
which the Modenese forced their passage, and seized the prize, which 
was deposited in the cathedral by the victors, the Geminiani, as a trophy 
of the defeat of the Petronii, with wonderful triumph. The event is 
the subject of Tassoni's Seccbia Rapita, or Rape of the Bucket, the first 
modern mock-heroic poem. 

The Mission of St. Augustine is one of the most striking instances in 
all history of the vast results which may flow from a very small begin- 
ning, — of the immense effects produced by a single thought in the heart 
of a single man, carried out conscientiously, deliberately, and fearlessly. 
Nothing in itself could seem more trivial than the meeting of Gregory 
with the three Yorkshire boys in the market-place at Rome ; yet this 
roused a feeling in his mind which he never lost ; and through all the 
obstacles which were thrown first in his own way, and then in that of 
Augustine, his highest desire concerning it was more than realized. 
From Canterbury, the first English Christian city — from Kent, the first 
English Christian kingdom — has by degrees arisen the whole constitu- 
tion of Church and State in England, which now binds together the 
whole British empire. And from the Christianity here established has 
flowed, by direct consequences, first, the Christianity of Germany — - 
then, after a long interval, of North America — and, lastly, we may 
trust, in time, of all India and all Australasia. — Dean Stanley's Historical 
Memorials of Canterbury, 

The Discovery of America is referred to by Humboldt as a " won- 
derful concatenation of trivial circumstances which undeniably exercised 
an influence on the course of the world's destiny. These circumstances 
are, " Washington Irving has justly observed, that if Columbus had 
resisted the counsel of Martin Alonzo Pinzon, and continued to steer 
westward, he would have entered the Gulf Stream and been borne to 
Florida, and from thence, probably, to Cape Hatteras and Virginia, — a 
circumstance of incalculable importance, since it might have been the 
means of giving to the United States of North America a Catholic 
Spanish population, in the place of the Protestant English one by which 
those regions were subsequently colonized. ' It seems to me like an 
inspiration/ said Pinzon to the Admiral, 'that my heart dictates to me 
that we ought to steer in a different direction.' It was on the strength 

F 



66 GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 

of this circumstance that in the celebrated lawsuit which Pinzon carried 
on against the heirs of Columbus, between 15 13 and 15 15, he main- 
tained that the discovery of America was alone due to him. This 
inspiration Pinzon owed, as related by an old sailor of Moguez, at the 
same trial, to the flight of a flock of parrots which he had observed in 
the evening flying towards the south-west, in order, as he might well 
have conjectured, to roost on trees on the land. Never has a flight of 
birds been attended by more important results. It may even be said that 
it has decided the first colonization in the New Continent, and the 
original of the Roman and Germanic races of men." 

An instance pregnant with mightier results could not, perhaps, be 
quoted than the following : — When many Puritans emigrated, or were 
about to emigrate, to America, in 1637, Cromwell, either despairing of 
his fortunes at home, or indignant at the rule of government which pre- 
vailed, resolved to quit his native country, in search of those civil and 
religious privileges of which he could freely partake in the New World. 
Eight ships were lying in the Thames, ready to sail : in one of them, 
says Hume (quoting Mather and other authorities), were embarked 
Hazelrig, Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell. A proclamation was issued, 
and -the -vessels werendetaihed by Order in Council. The King had, 
indeed, cause to rue the exercise of his authority. In the same year, 
Hampden's memorable trial — the great cause of Ship-money — occurred. 
What events rapidly followed ! 

Great changes have been decided by Casting Votes. At the beginning 
of the reign of Elizabeth, when the Protestant religion was restored, 
the question whether there should be Saints' Days' in the Calendar was 
considered by the Convocation, and sharply and fully debated. The 
Saints' Days were carried only by a single vote ; 59 members voted for 
Saints' Days, 58 for omitting them. — Literary Remains ofH.Fynes Clinton. 
._- Bishop Burnet relates that the Habeas Corpus Act passed by a mere 
mistake ; that one peer was counted for ten, and that made a majority 
for the measure. — Earl Stanhope's Speech, 1 856. 

Sir Arthur Owen, Bart., of Orielton, in the county of Pembroke, is 
the individual who is asserted to have given the casting vote which 
placed the Brunswick dynasty on the throne of England. A lady, in 
1856, residing at Haverfordwest, remembered her grandmother, who 
was staying at Orielton, at the time when Sir Arthur Owen rode to 
London on horseback, for the purpose of recording his vote : he arrived 
at the precise juncture when his single vote caused the scale to prepon- 
derate in favour of the descendants of the Electress Sophia (Notes and 
Queries, 2nd S., No. 313). Another account states that Sir Arthur 
Owen made the number even, and that it was Mr. Griffith Rice, M.P. 
for Carmarthenshire, who gave the casting 'vote. (See Debrett's 
Baronetage, 1824.) 

i The Act to recharter the first Bank of the United States was defeated 
yb the casting vote of Vice-President Clinton (ex -officio President of the 
/ Senate), and the Tariff Act of 1846 was ordered to be engrossed by the 
casting vote of Vice-President Dallas. 

" If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter," said Pascal, in his epi- 



GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 61 

grammatic and brilliant manner, " the condition of the world would 
have been different." The Mahomedans have a tradition, that when 
their prophet concealed himself in Mount Shur, his pursuers were de- 
ceived by a spider's web, which covered the mouth of the cave. Luther 
m'.ght have been a lawyer, had his friend and companion escaped the 
thunder-storm at Erfurt. Scotland had wanted her stern reformer, if 
the appeal of the preacher had not startled him in the chapel of St. 
Andrew's Castle. And if Mr. Grenville had not carried, in 1764, his 
memorable resolution as to the expediency of charging " certain Stamp- 
Duties" on the plantations in America, the western world might still 
have bowed to the British sceptre. Cowley might never have been a 
poet, if he had not found the Faery Queen in his mother's parlour. 
Opie might have perished in mute obscurity, if he had not looked over 
the shoulder of his young companion, Mark Otes, while he was drawing 
a butterfly. Giotto, one of the early Florentine painters, might have 
continued a rude shepherd-boy, if a sheep drawn by him upon a stone 
had not attracted the notice of Cimabue as he went that way. 

Cromwell was near being strangled in his cradle by a monkey : here, 
was this wretched ape wielding in his paws the destinies of nations, :j 
Charles Wesley refuses to go with his wealthy namesake to Ireland ; I 
and the inheritance which would have been his, goes to build up the 
fortunes of a Wellesley instead of a Wesley ; and to this decision of a 
schoolboy (as Mr. Southey observes) Methodism may owe its existence, 
and England its military — and we trust we may now add, its civil and 
political — glory. — Quarterly Review. 

The possibility of a great change being brought about by very slight 
beginnings may be illustrated by the tale which Lockman tells of a 
vizier who, having offended his master, was condemned to perpetual 
captivity in a lofty tower. At night his wife came to weep below his 
window. " Cease your grief," said the sage ; " go home for the pre- s 
sent, and return thither when you have procured a live black-beetle, 
together with a little ghee (or buffalo's butter), three clews, one of the 
finest silk, another of stout pack-thread, and another of whipcord ; 
finally, a stout coil of rope." When she again came to the foot of the 
tower, provided according to her husband's commands, he directed her 
to touch the head of the beetle with a little of the ghee, to tie one end 
of the silk around him, and to place the beetle on the wall of the tower. 
Attracted by the smell of the butter, which he conceived to be in store 
somewhere above him, the beetle continued to ascend till he reached 
the top, and thus put the vizier in possession of the end of the silk 
thread, who drew up the pack-thread by means of the silk, the small 
cord by means of the pack-thread, and by means of the cord a stout 
rope capable of sustaining his whole weight ; and so, at last, escaped 
from the place of his duresse. 

Many a writer, for want of attention to the soundness of his premises, 
arrives at a " most lame and impotent conclusion." So long as the 
first is taken for granted, the latter passes muster ; but disturb the one, 
and down topples the other. Colton, in the second volume of his 
Lacon, in illustrating " great events from small causes," has fa.Ien into 

F 2 



68 GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES. 

an error of this class when he tells us that " If a private country gentle- 
man in Cheshire about the year 1730 had not been overturned in his 
carriage, it is extremely probable that America, instead of being a free 
republic at this moment, would have continued a dependent colony of 
England. This country gentleman happened to be Augustus Wash- 
ington, Esquire, who was thus accidentally thrown into the company of 
a lady who afterwards became his wife, who emigrated with him to 
America, and in the year 1732, at Virginia, became the envied mother 
of George Washington the Great." Many thousand copies of Lacon 
had been published before the authenticity of this anecdote was ques- 
tioned, in Notes and Queries in 1858, when it was found to be at 
variance with the facts of Washington's biography, as pointed out by 
Dr. Doran: "the father of George Washington {Augustin, not 
Augustus) was born in America, where his family had been settled 
since the year 1657. It was, at least, about that time that the brothers, 
John and Lawrence "Washington, emigrated from England to Virginia. 
Both of them married. John had two sons; Lawrence had one 
daughter and two sons, John and Augustin. This Augustin was twice 
married, and the great George Washington (born in 1732) was the 
eldest son of the second marriage." 

The failure of men who have embarked in literature as a profession 
is a favourite subject with those authors who are men of the world as 
well as men of letters. Still, their estimates are not unfrequently 
grounded in error, and the lessons they convey are fabulous and faulty. 
Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, in his nicely- written life of his father, instances 
" the most unhappy mistake made by all men who have dwelt upon 
the life of Laman Blanchard. It has been said by Sir Edward Lytton, 
as by lesser commentators, that Mr. Blanchard passed a life of intense 
anxiety — of war with the world, that only very slowly consented to 
exchange the fruits of his graceful genius for its solid comforts. No 
statement could be further from the truth. After a very short struggle 
in London, it was Mr. Blanchard's good fortune to have one or two 
powerful friends who were inclined to give a hearing to his tender and 
eloquent voice. He was for some time Resident Secretary to the 
Zoological Society in Bruton-street, an institution founded chiefly 
through the exertions of his brother-in-law, N. A. Vigors, M.P. for 
Carlow ; and hence he went direct from good appointment to good 
appointment to the end of his days. He edited, among other papers, 
the Courier, the True Sun, and the Court Journal. He was sub-editor 
of the Examiner when he died, and he long enjoyed the ripe fruits of 
a large popularity as a most gracefully-humorous magazine writer. If 
he had a disappointment, it must have been the neglect with which the 
world received the poetic gems that oozed from him — a neglect that 
has yet to be made good." 



6 9 

§ritbfj |5iste)T, 




WHY WAS BRITAIN CALLED ALBION ? 

E CAUSE of its lofty white cliffs (Lat. albus, white) on 
the southern coast. Others trace the word to the Celtic 
alb, alp, high. In the fabulous history of England, it is 
related that the first inhabitants were subdued by Albion, 
a giant, and a son of Neptune, who called the island after his own 
name, and ruled it forty-four years. Another legend derives the 
name from a certain Albina, the eldest of fifty daughters of " a 
strange Dioclesian king of Syria," who, having murdered their 
husbands on their marriage-night, one only excepted, whom his wife's 
loyalty saved, were by him, at the suit of his wife, their sister, not put 
to death, but turned out to sea in a ship unmanned, and who, as the 
tale goes, were driven on this island,* where they had issue by the inha- 
bitants— none but devils, as some write or others report, a lawless crew, 
without head or governor. Milton characterizes these stories as " too 
absurd and too unconscionably gross " for credence; but he remarks: 
"Sure enough we are that Britain hath been anciently termed Albion, 
both by Greeks and Romans." Coleridge has : — 

Not yet enslav'd, not wholly vile, 
O Albion, O my mother isle ! 

The name of " Albion" was probably given to England by the Gaels of 
the opposite coast, who could not fail to be struck with the chalky 
cliffs that characterize the nearest part of Kent. Settlers from Gaul 
probably came over to Britain, and their descendants, as we presume 
the Gaels of Scotland to be, though now confined to the northern part 
of the island, still retain among them the name of Albina, by which the 
whole country was once designated. (See Thoughts on the Origin, <b-'c, 
of the Gael, by James Grant, of Carimony.) 



THE ENGLISH CONQUEST OF BRITAIN. 
Both Englishmen and Welshmen are in the habit of calling every 
object which they do not understand by the name " Druidical," which 
for the most part is simply an excuse for ignorance. At the same time, 
the mass of Englishmen fail to have any rational view of a matter so 
simple in its main outline (though so perplexing in its details) as the 
English conquest of Britain. People look upon the " Ancient Britons" 
as their ancestors, while they sometimes wonder why the modem Britons 
do not speak English. Men read of the English Conquest as if it were 
analogous to the Norman Conquest. Not one man in ten realizes that 



70 DOMESDA Y BOOK. 

Hengest and Horsa, ./Ella and Cissa, were his own kinsmen, and that 
the Vortigern or the Arthur with whom he sympathizes, were not his 
kinsmen, but the enemies of his kinsmen. We believe that one great 
source of all this confusion is our fatal habit of calling all Englishmen 
who lived before 1066 Saxons. We all, like George III., "glory in 
the name of Briton," while, unless we are very affected indeed, we do 
not nowadays call ourselves Anglo-Saxons. Hence we naturally 
identify ourselves with the " ancient Briton," and forget that our own 
ancestor is to be looked for in the invading " Saxon." The plain fact is 
that, in 858 just as in 1858, and probably for four centuries before 858, 
the Englishman called himself an Englishman, while his Welsh neigh- 
bour called him a Saxon. The name " Saxon," to express the whole 
united nation of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, is absolutely unknown to 
our early writers. It was the Anglian, not the Saxon branch which 
gave its name to the whole. Among all Dr. Guest's many contribu- 
tions to our early history, none was more valuable than his daring to 
call things by their right names, and to speak of " the Early English 
Settlements" in Britain. 

When people, then, have realized the plain fact that the Welsh or 
Britons were the earlier inhabitants, while the English were the intrud- 
ing conquerors, the question naturally follows, What vestiges, n blood, 
language, or anything else, have the Celtic races left in that part of 
Britain which is now occupied by the English ? The question involves 
a host of others, as to the exact relations existing between the Celtic 
inhabitants of different parts of Britain, and as to the possibility of 
earlier Teutonic settlements before the great English Conquest. 
Thoroughly to answer it requires a most rare familiarity alike with the 
written documents and with the existing phenomena of our land. It 
requires a union of Celtic and Teutonic scholarship, and an acquain- 
tance with Celtic and Teutonic history, combined with the most diligent 
personal examination of the natural features, the artificial remains, the 
local nomenclature, and the local dialects of the whole island. — Satur- 
day Review. 



DOMESDAY BOOK AND ITS PARTIALITIES. 

Domesday has been well characterized as a wonder, almost a miracle. 
The work had never been done before, and, in the ages that, have passed, 
it has never been done so thoroughly again. The record is anything 
but dry and lifeless. As might be expected, Domesday takes a very 
decided line in politics. In its view King William was the lawful 
and immediate successor of King Eadward. He undoubtedly had to 
come from foreign parts to take possession of his kingdom ; we read 
how " Rex Willelmus venit in Angliam," but this might be said of 
George the First, of Charles the Second, or of that sanctified person 
King Jeames himself. It is only by little hints here and there that we 
find out that there was any more armed opposition to his coming than 
there was in the other three cases. We hear ever and anon how the 



DISPERSION OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 71 

former owners of certain lands died in the " bellum apud Hastinges." 
In one case a man of Essex (Essex f. 14) is recorded to have gone out 
to fight by sea against King William. He came back, seemingly- 
wounded, and gave a lordship to Saint Peter of Westminster, and we 
are significantly told how St. Peter kept it without any kind of autho- 
rity from King William, " postquam Rex venit in istam terram." That 
there ever was a King Harold is implicitly denied throughout the book. 
Norman chroniclers, even those most bitter against Harold, do not 
scruple to give a king de facto the title of " Rex." The Survey, 
as becomes a legal document, is more precise. We might as soon 
expect an Act of Charles the Second to recognise His Highness the 
Lord Protector. " Heraldus Comes" is constantly spoken of, but 
" Heraldus Rex" never. Once only, or rather twice in one page, do we 
find something like the titles of royalty given to the usurper. To be 
sure he is not called King, but it oozes out that he somehow or other 
reigned. One Loman in Hampshire (fol. 38) seems to have had his 
lands confiscated to the Crown in Harold's reign. Throughout Domes- 
day runs an anxiety to put every act of Harold's in an unfavourable 
light. Harold, like every other eminent man of his time, was involved 
in controversies about lands with churches and religious houses. The 
charters and local histories are full of such stories about everybody — 
not only about sinners like Godwine and Harold, but about holy men 
like Leofric, Waltheof, Saint Eadward himself. All of them appear, in 
this or that story, as robbers of the Church. That is to say, the monks 
or other churchmen told the story their own way, and of course in the 
way unfavourable to the layman. It is only here and there that we get 
the layman's version, which enables us to see that there are two sides to 
the story. Plenty of such disputes are spoken of in Domesday, but it 
is only when Harold is concerned that the transaction is invariably and 
pointedly spoken of as unjust. We hear of Harold in Domesday, as 
we hear in the Worcester Cartulary of Eadward, seizing church lands 
by violence ; but the chances are that the Founder of Waltham and the 
Founder of Westminster would each have had something to say for 
himself. In one case we distinctly find that the supposed act of violence 
was really an exchange. Harold gave the churchmen a " commutatio," 
but Domesday takes care to tell us that it was an " iniqua commutatio." 
— Selected and abridged from the Saturday Re-view. 



DISPERSION OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 

Fortunately, the spirit of antiquarianism awoke at the moment when 
monastic vanity or love of hoarding could protect no more the monu- 
ments of the past. Men like Lord Burghley, notes in whose handwrit- 
ing Mr. Hardy has discovered on manuscripts, and Selden, sheltered 
many a homeless volume. So high did the passion for collecting rise 
that a devotee of this new sect, when he thought the guardian of one 
of his adored relics undeserving of the trust, would steal it even from a 
friend, to the latter's grief, unmixed, however, with anything like con- 



72 DISPERSION OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 

tempt. Thus, one manuscript seems to have been purloined on a 
pretext of exchange — gold for brass— for printed copies of the same 
work. Mr. Hardy quotes Bishop Gibson's letter to the Master of 
University College on the subject : — 

" Sir John Marsham's collection must be considerable. There is a 
curious Ingulphus in your library, which, as his family says, Obadiah 
Walker stole from him. I told him what they lay to his charge. His 
answer was, that Sir John gave it to him, and that, as an acknowledg- 
ment, he presented him with some copies of the Ingulphus printed at 
Oxford. \t is very probable, though, Sir John did not design to part 
with the book ; nay, he used to be complaining of Mr. Walker for 
using him so unkindly ; but the old gentleman has too much the spirit 
of an antiquary and a great scholar to think stealing a manuscript any 
sin. He has ordered me not to discover where it is lodged." 

With all these occasional eccentricities in the antiquarian code of 
honour, the general taste awakened by such zealots has saved much 
ancient learning to us. And yet how much has managed to slip into 
oblivion ! Some works have been cast up on shore wanting an author, 
some authors without their works. Giraldus's Itinerarium Cambria 
has lost its invaluable maps ; nothing is left, but a description, of Queen 
Christina's copy, the solitary one, of the Draco Normannicus ; poste- 
rity is indebted to Bishop Fitz Nigel himself for the information that 
his Liber Tricolumnus is a work likely to be "useful" to it, as well as 
" agreeable reading" to the bishop's contemporaries ; and Leland inter- 
rupted the rats and beetles of Abingdon only in time to learn that they 
had been feasting on Joseph of Exeter's grand epic, the Bellum Antio- 
chenum. Sometimes a manuscript has been spirited away even in these 
days of printed catalogues, making its appearance in the lists of a 
cathedral library, but when searched for gone, perhaps the prey of some 
kleptomaniacal antiquarian, perhaps only mislaid, or bound up by mistake 
with another work. In a few exceptional cases, even modern guardians 
and owners have themselves proved unfaithful, like the Arras librarian, 
commemorated by Dr. Giles, who mutilated a valuable copy of Herbert 
of Bosham's Life of Becket for the value of the vellum ; and, like the 
authorities of the same city, who refused to redeem the missing leaves 
from Sir Thomas Phillipps, who had rescued them from a tailor, at the 
price of old parchment. — Times journal. 

Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wiltshire,^ gives this curious 
"digression" upon the dispersion of MSS. in his time : — " Anno 1633, 
I entered into my grammar at the Latin school at Yatton-Keynel, in 
the church, where the curate, Mr. Hart, taught the eldest boys Virgil, 
Ovid, Cicero, &c. The fashion then was to save the forules of the 
bookes with a false cover of parchment, &c, old manuscript which I 
[could not] was too young to understand ; but I was pleased with the 
elegancy of the writing and the coloured initiall letters. I remember 
the rector here, Mr. Wm. Stump, gr.-son of St. the cloathier of Malmes- 
bury, had severall manuscripts of the abbey. He was a proper man and 
a good fellow ; and when he brewed a barrel 1 of spec all ale, his use 
was to slop the bunghole, under the clay, with a sheet of manuscript ; 



WHO WAS GILD AS? 73 

he sayd nothing did it so well, which sore thought did grieve me then 
to see. Afterwards I went to schoole to Mr. Latimer at Leigh-delamer, 
the next parish, where was the like use of covering of books. In my 
grandfather's dayes the manuscripts flew about like butterflies. All 
musick bookes, account bookes, copie bookes, &c, were covered with 
old manuscripts, as wee cover them now with blew paper or marbled 
piper ; and the glover at Malmesbury made great havock of them, and 
gioves were wrapt up, no doubt, in many good pieces of antiquity. 
Before the late warres, a world of rare manuscripts perished hereabout; 
for within half a dozen miles of this place was the abbey of Malmes- 
bury, where it may be presumed the library was as well furnisheo with 
choice copies as most libraries of England ; and, perhaps, in this library 
we might have found a correct Plinie's Natur all History, which Camitus, 

a monk here, did abridge for King Henry the Second One may 

also perceive, by the binding of old bookes, how the old manuscripts 
went to wrack in those dayes. Anno 1647, I went to Parson Stump 
out of curiosity to see his manuscripts, whereof I had seen some in my 
childhood ; but by that time they were lost and disperst. His sons 
were gunners and souldiers, and scoured their gunnes with them ; but he 
shewed me severall old deedes granted by the Lords Abbotts, with their 
seales annexed." 



WHO WAS GILD AS? 

According to some authorities, a British historian, who flourished in 
the first half of the sixth century. But, in 1839, a paper was read to 
the Royal Society of Literature, the commencement of the Biographia 
Literaria Britannica, by Mr. Thomas Wright, M.A., wherein is an 
entire overthrow of all the previous opinions of this writer, showing 
that, in all probability, such a person never existed, and that his history 
was a forgery. Archbishop Ussher, to solve the chronological difficul- 
ties, has supposed that there were two persons of this name ; but this 
conjecture, Mr. Wright shows, involves greater absurdities ; and he 
adds, that some, to reconcile all of it, " have supposed that there were 
six or seven." Gildas is supposed to have been the son of a British 
king, and the most ancient historian of Britain before the arrival of the 
Saxons. He bears a most forcible testimony to the vices of the British 
kings at the above period. He is often quoted by Horsley, in his 
Britannia Romana. 

Gibbon gave to Gildas the title of "the British Jeremiah ;" and in the 
Edinburgh Review we find this exquisite bit of satire upon his preten- 
sions : — " The British Jeremiah ... . is so pleased to find, or so 
determined to invent, topics for declamatory lamentation or praise, that 
it is difficult to distinguish the basis of truth from the fantastic super- 
structure of exaggeration and falsehood with which he has overloaded 
it." 

In Mr. Donee's copy of Tanner, in the Bodleian, there is the follow- 
ing note in Ritson's handwriting on the numerous surnames given to 
Gildas: — " i> Gildas was called Albanius, from his being born in Albany, 



74 HISTORIC MISREPRESENTA TIONS. 

now Scotland ; 2. Aldanus, a nonentity, forged by T. Dempster ; 3. 
Badonicus, from his having mentioned the battle of Badon, or being 
born in that year ; 4. Cambrius, as being a Briton ; 5. Hibernus, as 
sometime residing in Ireland ; 6. Quartus, from an absurd fancy that 
there were three of y e name before him ; 7. Sapiens, from his write- 
ings, real or imaginary. 

" There were no less than five Gildases made out of one, each of whom 
is the author of books that never existed." * 



INGULF OF CROYLAND AND WILLIAM OF 
MALMESBURY. 

The soi-disant Ingulf of Croyland's chronicle is now known — though 
apparently Savile, and Spelman, and other giants of antiquarianism did 
not know it — to have been framed with a dishonest object, and to be 
from first to last a monkish forgery, with its charters composed in the 
scriptorium, its general history a patchwork of piracies, and its special 
anecdotes fictions. The compilers of such narratives, whether retained 
advocates— for authorship was now become a profession — or patriotic 
believers in the abstract justice of their society's claims, and in the duty 
of all pious brethren to repair unlucky legal flaws, had their appointed 
task — viz., to arrange, not to select, materials, and to make out as good 
a case as possible from them. The name of William of Malmesbury 
himself, prefixed to works of this order, is no guarantee of good faith. 
His critical sceptic sm may perhaps be seen struggling occasionally, as 
in his Glastonbury Chronicle ; but in the end, as servilely, though with 
more semblance of squeamishness than the pseudo- Ingulf, " pure fable" 
and " forged charters" are all obediently copied by him and stamped 
with the authority of his name. 

The History of Ingulphus is a clever but undoubted fiction of the four- 
teenth and fifteenth centuries, an impudent fabrication, to all appear- 
ance, by the Croyland monks for patching up a defective title. The 
genuineness and authenticity were first questioned more than a century 
ago ; and in the last ten or twelve years the subject has received in- 
creased attention. In the Archafological Journal for March, 1862, both 
the history and charters of Ingulphus have been dissected at consider- 
able length ; and though in some parts an interesting compilation, the 
book, as an historical authority, is altogether worthless. — Athenaum.\ 



HISTORIC MISREPRESENTATIONS. 

We have been accustomed of late to very remarkable disturbances in 
the atmosphere of history. We have been told that Richard the Third 



* A Manual of 'British Historians, 1845. 
t In the same journal, No. 2121, we read of Giraldus's Itinerarium, being 
"stuffed full of stupendously impossible things that are gravely described as 
facts. " 



THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. 75 

did not kill his nephews, and that Henry the Eighth was rather a tender 
husband ; but we were not prepared for Major Murray's discovery that 
the Black Prince, and not Henry the Fifth, won the great day at Agin- 
court. Surely this transfer of glory from Lancaster to Plantagenet is a 
little unjust to the former ! Would it be fair if we were to maintain 
that Sir Cloudesley Shovel gained the battle of Trafalgar or that Marl- 
borough won the victory of 18 15 at Waterloo ? If this be the method 
by which the Major registers the glories of the Scottish regiments, we 
may well be doubtful of the few he does chronicle amid the masses of 
fine writing, droll logic, and of his oracular remarks, which remind us 
of the words of the poet : — 

To observations which ourselves we make, 
We grow more partial for th' observer's sake. 

Again, as if to render undoubted the right of the Black Prince to the 
glory of being the victor at Agincourt, the Major calls Poitiers, Agin- 
court, and Cressy successive defeats. If you allow that young Edward 
at fifteen or sixteen gained the last of these fields in 1346, the Major 
supposes, it would seem, that he, incontestably, carried off the glory of 
Agincourt some years previously — Agincourt having been fought in 
14 15 ! and that the young hero commenced his career of invincibility at 
Poitiers, which <voe used to think was fought ten years after Cressy — 
namely, in 1356. — Athenaum. 



THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. 

The principle of female succession seems to have been indigenous in 
Britain. Tacitus mentions it as a peculiarity of this nation : " neque 
sexumin imperils discernerunt ;" and though Blackstone is under a slight 
error in considering Boadicea, who was the widow and not the daughter 
of the last King, as an instance of hereditary succession, it is clear that 
the British crown was in those days inheritable by females. 

Our English annals afford a curious and lamentable anomaly on this 
subject; for, while the principle of female succession has never been 
denied, it has so happened in practice that from the Conquest to the 
accession of Queen Mary I. — nearly 500 years — there is not a single 
instance in which the female heir was not violently deprived of her regal 
rights, and generally by the next heir male. Matilda, the only surviving 
child of Henry I., was dispossessed by Stephen, and, after his death, 
passed over by her own son. Philippa of Clarence and her issue, heirs 
to the Crown, on the death of Richard II., were excluded by the 
usurpation of the next male, Henry IV. and his descendants, which 
produced those bloody and protracted struggles called somewhat inac- 
curately the contest of the Houses of York and Lancaster, for the Duke 
of York's only title was as the son of Anne, the daughter of Philippa of 
Clarence. Elizabeth, only surviving child of Edward IV., was set aside 
by the next male, her uncle, Richard III., and subsequently by 
Henry VII., who, though he was glad to repair his own illegitimate title 
by an union with her, never acknowledged her separate rights, and aflected 



j6 TEST OF HISTORIC TRUTH. 

to transmit the crown to their son, Henry VIII., as the heir of the 
Lancastrian branch, though his real right was as the descendant, through 
three females and two males, of Lionel of Clarence. 

Fortunately for England, there existed at the death of Edward VI. 
no one who could advance any claim to the Crown to the exclusion of 
heirs female ; and in the person of Mary was the first time brought into 
practice a principle which was coeval with the monarchy. The dis- 
turbances which she and her sister successively met with, arose from 
questions not of her sex, but of her legitimacy ; for they were advanced 
by persons pretending to be heirs female, like themselves, and were 
easily put down. How it might have been if there had been a male 
competitor may be doubted, though it is probable that the severe lessons 
inflicted on the nation by the War of the Roses would have taught 
them to acquiesce in the legitimate line of succession ; and that first 
step being made in the case of Mary, the vigour, glory, and duration of 
Elizabeth's reign may be said to have fixed and consecrated the ancient 
theory of the Constitution. — Quarterly Review. 



TEST OF HISTORIC TRUTH. 

Without attempting to press the reader into the meshes of minute 
historic investigation, we ask him to accept the following as a useful 
hint of ready practical application : — 

An acute critic in the Quarterly Review, writing of the constitutional 
history of the Anglo-Saxons, maintains that so beset is the subject with 
enigmas, that no labour or sagacity can entirely unravel them. We can 
only proceed by the comparison of probabilities ; an approximation to 
the truth is all that can be effected or desired, and the fitness of the 
hypothesis must be judged, not only from its application to the parti- 
cular page or chapter, but from its conformity to the entire system. 
The right exposition of the Anglo-Saxon laws may become an object 
of interest, not merely to the antiquary or the historian, but to the 
practical lawyer. Many questions of vital importance in our present 
form of government can only be decided by reference to laws or usages 
which have prevailed since the time " whereof the memory of man 
runneth not to the contrary." The rights of the electors of a borough 
may depend upon the exposition of the most obsolete passages in the 
laws of King Canute. Such cases have occurred. Should they be 
mooted again, the truth of the most ingenious theory by which the 
zealous, learned, and laborious advocate attempts to deduce universal 
suffrage from the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman free-pledge, may be 
put to an easy and certain test by simply inquiring how far this political 
equality was possible, according to the general frame of the Anglo- 
Saxon or Anglo-Norman commonwealth. When any historical theory 
does not agree with the general structure of the Constitution, we may 
safely pronounce it to be unfounded. We may discover the error in the 
same manner that Linnaeus detected the ingenuity of his students, who 
produced to him a shrub composed of different plants so nicely adapted 



LOCAL TRADLTLON 77 

together, that the eye failed to discern the junction of the parts. But 
the factitious origin of the compound was immediately perceptible to 
the mind which saw that the functions, united by art, could never have 
been co-existent in living nature. 



DECAY OF LOCAL TRADITION. 

It has been frequently remarked that the general decay of local tra- 
dition, or the difficulty of obtaining particulars of events, or the sites 
of the most remarkable passages of history, is, year by year, becoming 
more evident. The great destroyer of tradition is, no doubt, the engine 
which also embalms it and records its value — the destroyer, because it is 
the renovator of so much else — the printing press. The narrator is 
silent before the writer and the reader, as the rhapsodist gave way to the 
scribe of antiquity. Yet, still we might expect that in the vicinity of 
great transactions among a rude and ignorant peasantry we should 
find more frequent vestiges of the one memorable action which made 
their locality famous, and it is astonishing to find how often these are 
completely obliterated. 

Let the traveller in quest of tradition make, for example, a pilgrimage 
to the several sites of the great actions of our civil wars — let him 
question the peasantry about Newbury, Naseby, Edgehill, Marston 
Moor, &c, and we incline to the belief, from the little that has been 
thus obtained, that there is little more forthcoming or in existence. 
Yet it is probable that among those living near these spots are the lineal 
descendants of spectators of these very battles. There are no families 
in the British islands more ancient than many of those which are to be 
found among our yeomanry and peasantry. Every now and then some 
proof comes to light of an antiquity of tenure on the part of such 
families far exceeding that of the Stanleys or Howards. The Duke of 
York, for example, ejected from a farm at Chertsey a certain Mr. 
Wapshott, who claimed lineal and accredited descent from Reginald 
Wapshott, the armour-bearer of Alfred, who is said to have established 
Reginald in this very farm. This personage was an example of the 
tenacity with which tradition might be thus preserved, for his family 
version of their origin derived them from Wapshott, the warrener, and 
not the armour-bearer of Alfred.* Again, we have recovered of late a 
series of instances which show how few individuals not uncommonly 
intervene between ourselves and the eyewitnesses of remarkable men or 
actions. The Countess of Desmond is a well-known example, and our 
contemporaries of Notes and Queries have been bringing to light a series 
of others. King William IV. had spoken to a butcher at Windsor who 
had conversed with Charles II. What is still more remarkable, a 
person living in 1 786 conversed with a man who knew a man who knew 
a man that fought at Flodden Field. — Times journal. 



* This tradition is of very questionable worth (See page 91.) 



7 8 ENGLISH HISTORY. 

AN ENGLISHMAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF HIS COUNTRY'S 
HISTORY. 

Sir James Stephen, in the examinations for the Indian Civil Service, 
was astonished to find how badly the candidates generally acquitted 
themselves in English history. The fact points to a defect in the routine 
education of our schools. As a general rule, all that a boy knows, 
when he leaves school, of English history, has been derived from Gold- 
smith or some other abridgment, aided by the light thrown on par- 
ticular periods by some historical novels. When, as a young man, he 
begins to think that really he must obtain some more profound know- 
ledge, he sets down resolutely to Hume and Smollett. Let us suppose 
him to have " got up " these carefully : we much doubt whether he 
would have been able to answer more than one or two of Sir James 
Stephen's questions. But let him have given the same attention to 
Hallam's two great works, and we will answer for it the professor would 
not have had to complain of his ignorance. The pernicious influence of 
Hume on English history was discussed some years ago in the Quar- 
terly Review, in an article written, we believe, by Sir Francis Palgrave, 
a most competent authority. It is to this influence must be referred the 
remarkable fact that accomplished Englishmen, who have mastered the 
history of other nations — who know all about the Fronde, and can dis- 
course ably on Guelf and Ghibelin, white and black — who are even 
somewhat deep in the hardy institutions of Castile and Aragon, have so 
little real knowledge of the history of their own country. Hume has 
splendid passages ; but he omits almost as much as he tells. Lingard is 
able, acute, and singularly laborious — in fact, his history is admirable ; 
but then we are rather afraid of him. The subjects for English com- 
position proposed by Sir J. Stephen — the problem in Strafford's case as 
to penalties of death by retrospective acts of the Legislature, the 
dialogue in T674 between Clarendon and Burnet, and the letter of the 
Jacobite agent in London to his friend in the country on the receipt of 
the news of the Pretender's arrival at Derby — are excellent ; but we 
think many of Mr. Temple's questions objectionable. For instance, 
" Compare the character of Shylock with that of Barabbas in Marlow's 
Jew of Malta.'' We will undertake to say that Mr. Temple himself 
never commenced his study of the old dramatists until after he had 
taken his degree. To put such a question to young men fresh from 
college, was to suppose that they had been substituting a peculiar and 
remote kind of reading for their proper studies, whether voluntary or 
prescribed. Again, " Compare the Utopia of Sir T. More with the Nova 
Atalantis of Bacon." We should like to how many young men have 
read the Utopia, except by accident. The notice of the book in Sir 
J. Mackintosh's Life of More is sufficiently full to enable a candidate 
to make some kind of answer to the question ; and perhaps an eccentric 
college tutor, as an out-of-the-way kind of exercise, may have given 
passages to his pupils, in order that they might convert this Erasmian 
Latin into pure Ciceronian ; but this sort of second-hand knowledge of 



PERSONAL MOTIVES AND PATRIOTISM. 79 

the book was, we are certain, never contemplated by Mr. Temple. He 
probably is as much opposed as his colleagues to " shabby superficiality." 
We must also object to what may be called the astronomical parts of 
Milton being offered for the explanation of candidates ; and we do not 
greatly admire the encouragement given to such books as Elegant 
Extracts, by calling on young men " to write out Johnson's celebrated 
comparison of Dryden and Pope." 



HUMES HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 

Though Hume's authority as a text-book is growing weaker and 
weaker, he has still a classic status on our bookshelves ; and his style 
will probably keep him, as it has kept him hitherto, in tolerable repute. 
But for a faithful presentment of history, apart from his scepticism and 
his inveterate antipathy to the popular elements of our progress, he has 
been in great measure superseded by the lapse of time and by the 
infinite accretions to our knowledge which time has brought to light. 
No one refers with confidence to his narrative of our earlier kings since 
the researches of Hallam and others into our institutions during the 
Middle Ages. His knowledge of the Tudor sovereigns is equally meagre 
beside that of Mr. Froude, Mr. Bruce, and various modern contri- 
butors. Godwin, Guizot, Forster, Carlyle, Sandford, and others have 
materially damaged his presentation of Charles I. and of the Common- 
wealth ; and his whole history of the Stuarts is now seen to be an inade- 
quate statement even of the facts, irrespective of its unwarrantable bias, 
in which it has been counterbalanced by the eloquent exaggerations of 
Macaulay. In short, not only is Hume the reverse of popular in his 
aim and predilections, but his narrative, in the presence of our better 
information, is imperfect as a mere record of the incidents which con- 
stitute the History of England. 



PERSONAL MOTIVES AND PRETENDED PATRIOTISM. 

Could we sometimes discover the motives of those who first head 
political revolutions, we should find how greatly personal hatreds have 
actuated them in deeds which have come down to us in the form of 
patriotism, and how often the revolutionary spirit disguises its private 
passions by its public conduct. In illustration of this principle, Disraeli 
takes two very notorious politicians— Wat Tyler and Sir William 
Walworth. " Wat, when in servitude, had been beaten by his master, a 
great merchant of wines, and a sheriff of London. His chastisement, 
working on an evil disposition, appears never to have been forgiven ; and 
when this Radical assumed his short-lived dominion, he had his old 
master beheaded, and his head carried before him on the point of a 
-spear ! So Grafton tells us, to the eternal obloquy of this arch-Jacobin, 
who ' was a crafty fellow, and an excel ent wit, but wanting grace.' 
I would not suliy the glory of the patriotic blow which ended the 



80 WHITEWASHING REPUTATIONS. 

rebellion with the rebel ; yet there are secrets in history ! Sir William 
Walworth, ' the ever-famous mayor of London ,' as Stow designates 
him, has left the immortality of his name to one of our suburbs ; but 
when I discovered in Stow's Survey, that Bankside, which he farmed out 
to the Dutch -vronvs, and which Wat had pulled down, I am inclined 
to suspect that private feeling first knocked down the saucy ribald, and 
then thrust him through and through with his dagger ; and that there 
was as much of personal vengeance as patriotism, which raised his arm 
to crush the demolisher of so much valuable property !" — Curiosities of 
Literature, p. 550, note. Edit. 1867. 



WHITEWASHING REPUTATIONS. 

It was the shrewd remark of Dr. Johnson, that when the world think 
long about a matter, they generally think right ; and this may be one 
reason why attempts to whitewash the received villains or tyrants of 
history have been commonly attended with but indifferent success. The 
ugly features of Robespierre's character look positively more repulsive 
through the varnish of sophistry which M. Louis Blanc has spread over 
them. The new light thrown by Mr. Carlyle on the domestic and 
political career of Frederic William of Prussia, the collector of giants, 
simply exhibits him as the closest approximation to a downright brute 
or madman that was ever long tolerated as the ruler of a civilized com- 
munity. Despite of Mr. Froude's indefatigable research, skilful arrange- 
ment of materials, and attractive style, Henry VIII. is still the Royal 
Bluebeard, who spared neither man in his anger nor woman in his lust ; 
and hardly any perceptible change has been effected in the popular 
impression of Richard III., although since 1621 (the date of Buck's 
History), it has continued an open question whether he was really guilty 
of more than a small fraction of the crimes imputed to him. 

Walpole's Historic Doubts are described by Sir Walter Scott as " an 
acute and curious example how minute antiquarian research may shake 
our faith in the facts most pointedly averred by general history. It is 
remarkable also to observe how, in defending a system, which was, 
probably, at first adopted as a mere literary exercise, Mr. Walpole's 
doubts acquired in his own eyes the respectability of certainties, in 
which he could not brook controversy." Yet, no part of this remarkable 
essay is freshly remembered, except an incidental reference (on which 
the ingenious author laid little stress) to the apocryphal testimony of the 
Countess of Desmond, who had danced with Richard in her youth, and 
declared him to be the handsomest man at court except his brother 
Edward, confessedly the handsomest man of his day. Mr. Sharon 
Turner's learned and conscientious recapitulation of the good measures, 
enlightened views, and kindly actions of Richard, has proved equally 
inoperative to stem the current of obloquy. Why is all this ? why do 
we thus cling to a judgment which, we are assured, has been ill con- 
sidered, to the extent of uniformly opposing a deaf ear to motions for a 
new trial ? Is it because the numerical majority of the English public 



CEL TIC P OP ULA TION OF BRIT A IN. 8 1 

are in the same predicament as the great Duke of Marlborough, who 
boldly avowed Shakspeare to be the only History of England he ever 
read ? because the ground once occupied by creative genius is thenceforth 
unapproachable by realities and unassailable by proofs. — (Abridged from 
the Edinburgh Review , No. 234.) The paper has this naive conclusion : 
" Polydore Vergil speaks of Richard's ' horrible vigilance and celerity.' 
It was the old story of the sword wearing out the scabbard ; and the 
chances are that he would not long have survived Bosworth Field had he 
come off unscathed the conqueror" 



THE CELTS AND THE IRISH COMPARED. 

Dr. Mommsen, in his History of Rome, vol. iv., vividly describes the 
Celtic race in Gaul, with their loose septs, their impressionable nature, 
their sense of nationality without its power, their superstition, idleness, 
and vanity, and adds the following comparison :— 

" On the eve of parting from this remarkable nation we may be 
allowed to call attention to the fact that in the accounts of the ancients, 
as to the Celts on the Loire and Seine, we find almost every one of the 
characteristic traits which we are accustomed to recognise as marking 
the Irish. Every feature reappears : the laziness in the culture of the 
fields ; the delight in tippling and brawling ; the ostentation ; the lan- 
guage, full of comparisons and hyperboles, of allusions and quaint 
terms; the droll humour, the hearty delight in singing and reciting 
the deeds of past ages, and the most decided talent for rhetoric and 
poetry ; the curiosity and the extravagant credulity ; the childlike piety 
which sees in a priest a father and asks for his advice in all things ; the 
unsurpassed power of national feeling ; and the closeness with which 
those who are fellow-countrymen cling together, almost like one family, 
in opposition to the stranger ; the inclination to rise in revolt under the 
first chance leader, but, at the same time, the utter incapacity to pre- 
serve a self-reliant courage, to perceive the right time for waiting and 
for striking, to attain or even to tolerate any organization, any sort of 
fixed military or political discipline. It is, and remains, at all times 
and places the same indolent and poetical, irresolute and fervid, inquisi- 
tive, credulous, amiable, clever, but, in a political point of view, 
thoroughly useless nation." 



THE CELTIC POPULATION OF BRITAIN. 

In the History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, Mr. 
Pearson, in his chapter on " the Saxon Conquest," thus ably confutes 
a notion which has hitherto been prevalent. The Celtic race in this 
country, never a dense population, became fused and soon lost sight of, 
among the hordes that from the fourth century, if not from an earlier 
date, in ever-increasing numbers, were descending upon the British 
coasts. " The common belief (says Mr. Pearson) that the Celtic popu- 

G 



82 PREHISTORIC KINGS OF BRITAIN. 

lation of Britain was exterminated or driven into "Wales or Brittany by 
the Saxons, has absolutely no foundation in history. It probably ori- 
ginated with the Welsh, who confounded the position of their ancestors, 
as premier tribe under Vortigern, with the occupation of the island. The 
mistake is as if we should suppose that the Silures, under Caractacus, 
were the whole British people. . . . We hear of great slaughters by the 
Saxons on their bloody battle-fields, but no massacres after the fight, ex- 
cept in the single case of Anderida. . . . We know, by the complaints of 
Welsh poets,that a race of Romanized Britons, whom they called Loegrians, 
took part with the invaders against their Celtic kinsmen ; and we cannot 
suppose that the Saxons would cut the throats of their allies after the war. 
The object of the races who broke up the Roman Empire was not to settle 
in a desert, but to live at ease, as an aristocracy of soldiers, drawing 
rent from a peaceful population of tenants. Moreover, coming in small 
and narrow skiffs, the conquerors could not bring their families with 
them, and must in most cases have taken wives from the women of the 
country. . . . These probabilities are confirmed by facts that meet us 
on every side. The political division of hundreds belonged to the Ger- 
mans, in the time of the earliest Frank kings, and probably indicates in 
England what number of Saxons settled in a conquered district. Now 
here we find as a rule that the number is always greatest in maritime 
countries, and smaller as we advance inland and westward. Sixty-six 
in Kent and seventy-two in Sussex contrast strongly with six in Lan- 
cashire, five in Staffordshire, and seven in Leicestershire. . . . Evidently 
the sea-rovers settled chiefly in the parts which the sea washed, and 
which they had first fought for and won, leaving the heart of the 
country to a more gradual process of military colonization by their sons. ' 



PREHISTORIC KINGS OF BRITAIN. 

Dr. Latham, in a paper read by him to the Royal Society of Litera- 
ture, has pointed out the remarkable repetition of the same names notice- 
able in the earliest accounts of English history; and has shown "(r) 
That many of the early names may be accounted for by the effort so 
natural in all early nations to invent an Eponymus from which the dif- 
ferent districts were supposed to have taken their names: thus Debbon 
was assumed as the ancestor (so to speak) of Devon ; Corindus of Corn- 
wall ; Canute of Kent. (2) That the whole story of these rulers must 
be considered, not as legend, not as the offspring of mere fancy, but 
rather as inferential — with some slight book-learning intermixed ; when, 
however, this occurs, it is altogether incorrect. (3) That the early story 
of Britain repeats itself in that of Prussia. Thus the ancient name of that 
country is Prothenia, and so we find a Prothenius as its Eponymus. In 
the same way, we find the three sons of Brutus, Locrine, Albanac, and 
Camber, respectively as the eponymi of Luggris (the Welsh part of 
England), of Albion, and of Cambria. Besides these, some names occur 
which cannot be connected with any particular places, such as Madan, 
Membricius, and Maguild. These last are possibly of German origin, 



BRITONS IN THE TIME OF CMSAR. %$ 

alliteration being common in the German genealogies. Again, such 
names as Ebroin and Brunehild are clearly historical, and refer, the latter 
to a Queen of the Franks in the fifth century, and contemporary with 
King Arthur (see Gregory of Tours), the former, to a well-known 
Chamberlain. Then, we find a set of names (such as P^eval, Dunwa 1 , 
Cassival) who agree in the termination <val which is common to all of 
them ; of these Cassival, probably, has some connexion with the well- 
known Cassivelaunus. In the same way, it is possible that Gorboduc 
and Vigent may be modifications of Caractacus and Fulgentius. Gene- 
rally, much of this legendary story must be looked upon rather as a mis- 
representation of real history — a portion, in fact, of true history re- 
peated and distorted, with an entire absence of any poetry or imagina- 
tion. In all, we probably have before us a reflexion of the way in which 
the true history struck different hearers with reference, in some instances, 
to the conflict between the British and Saxon Church, and a representa- 
tion of speculations which would be not unnatural to the period and to 
the disciples of St. Columbanus." 



THE BRITONS IN THE TIME OF CESAR. 

Mr. Craufurd, F.R.S., has written an able critical dissertation on 
" Caesar's Account of Britain and its Inhabitants in reference to Eth- 
nology." The facts stated and opinions put forward by the Roman 
General are minutely examined by the light of the knowledge since ac- 
quired, and the accounts of barbarous countries visited for the first time 
in our own day. " The conclusion," said Mr. Craufurd, " to which we 
must, I think, come from the perusal of Caesar's account of such of the 
Britons as he saw is, that although they were certainly barbarians, they 
were very far from being savages. They were in possession of nearly 
all the domestic animals known to the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. 
They possessed the art of making malleable iron, and they mixed and 
melted, and exported tin. They had a fixed money, although a very 
rude one. In war they had an infantry, a cavalry, and chariots. There 
can be no doubt that they possessed the art of manufacturing pottery ; 
and I think it most probable that they had the art of weaving the wool 
into a coarse fabric, and perhaps of dyeing this fabric with woad. We 
may, then, safely pronounce our forefathers to have been a more ad- 
vanced people than were the Mexicans and Peruvians when first seen by 
Europeans, 1600 years after the time of Caesar. They encountered 
the first invader of their country with far more courage and even mili- 
tary prowess than did the Mexicans the Spaniards, or than did even the 
Hindoos the Greeks and Macedonians of Alexander ; but these last 
results were more an affair of race than of civilization. Such were the 
Britons whom Caesar saw, and assuredly he saw no savages." 



84 THE TWO ARTHURS. 

CANNIBALISM IN EUROPE. 

Mr. Craufurd states that the only European nation against whom a 
charge of cannibalism has been brought are the Caledonians, and more 
especially the ancient Scots, the accusation being made by Jerome. Mr. 
Craufurd, however, seems to have overlooked what is said by Diodorus 
Siculus and by Strabo. The former says (Book v. c. 32), speaking of 
the Gauls, — " But the most savage being those dwelling under the north 
and those who border on Scythia. They say that some eat men, as also 
of the Britons, those that inhabit Iris as it is called." 

Strabo says (Book iv. sec. 4), — " Now, there are also other islands 
about Britain, small ones, but one large one, I erne, extended along it to- 
wards the north, long, but having greater width. About which we have 
nothing to say positively, except that the inhabitants are more savage than 
the Britons, being both man-eaters and much-eaters, and thinking it 
right to devour their fathers when they have died, and openly to do acts of 
incest. And this, however, we say thus, as not having (for it) faith- 
worthy witnesses. Yet as to the man-eating, it is said to be also a 
Scythian practice, and in the necessities of sieges, the Celti too, and the 
Iberes, and others besides, are said to have done this. But about Thule 
the account is still more indistinct, because of the remoteness, for they 
place it the northernmost of the lands that have names." 



THE TWO ARTHURS AND THE ROUND TABLE. 

The semi-mythical British chieftain, who defeated the heathen Saxons 
in twelve pitched battles, and the supposed discovery of whose bones at 
Glastonbury in the time of Henry the Second, is recorded by Giraldus 
Cambrensis, is quite another being from the son of Uther Pendragon, 
who instituted the famous Round Table, and whose knights went in ad- 
venturous quest of the Holy Grayl. What though the good bishop 
of St. Asaph, Geoffrey of Monmouth, was denounced as an impudent 
liar by his contemporary William of Newburgh, whose notions of history 
were more sober and prosaic ? He has created for us Arthur as we 
know him now, excepting those finer and higher touches of character 
that are due to the creative power of Tennyson. Arthur is the most 
mythical of all those who are known as "The Nine Worthies." Whether 
Arthur was or was not a real personage, matters not the least to the 
readers of Sir Thomas Malory's romance, Morte cT Arthur, originally 
printed by Caxton, and prepared for reprinting in the edition of 181 7, 
by William Upcott, who supplied in one place seventeen pages, without 
any hint to that effect. For fifty years the interpolations have passed as 
genuine among learned critics, who have quoted from them passages 
wholly spurious as Caxton's genuine text. Mr. Upcott's has been 
traced to the first edition by Wynkyn de Worde, from which it was in- 
geniously adapted, not without certain alterations that disguised the in- 
terpolation, and made it appear uniform with the rest. There is, how- 
ever, a peculiar charm about Malory's romance which endears it to us 



THE TWO ARTHURS. 85 

and gives it a real value. He does not describe to us our most remote 
ancestors, the Britons (whom their Saxon conquerors did not, after all, 
wholly exterminate from that portion of the country in which they them- 
selves settled), but he presents us with life-like pictures of our Norman 
forefathers, the chivalrous knights and stately dames of England, from 
the time of Henry the Second downwards. The whole compilation, 
though from numerous sources, is instinct with the spirit of chivalry, 
and the same adventurous daring that impelled the Knights of the Round 
Table to set off in quest of the Sangreal, actually possessed the living 
knights who went a-crusading in very earnest, and who considered no 
duty more binding than the redemption of the Holy Land from the in- 
fidels. There is Sir Gawayne, whose sad death Malory passes over 
much too slightly, but who was so tenderly lamented by King Arthur, 
in the beautiful words of the old alliterative romance — 

Dear cousin by kind, in care am I left, 
For now my worship is went, and my war ended ; 
Here is the hope of my health, my happing of arms ! 
My heart and my heartiness, whole in him lingered, 
My counsel, my comfort, that keeped my heart ; 
Of all knights the king that under Christ lived ! 

There are Merlin the Magician, King Mark the treasonable, Sir Tristram 
and La Beale Isoud, Sir Galahad " without fear and without reproach," 
Sir Bors, Sir Perceval, Sir Ector, Sir Bedevere, and a host of other 
familial- names ; and at last the drama draws to its dark, sad close, 
where the names meet us of Sir Mordred, whom Layamon calls wickedest 
of kings, and of her whom the same old poet describes as 

Wenhaver the queen, most miserable of women ! 

And it is to Layamon that we owe the first description of Arthur's 
departure to the Isle of Avilion : "There approached from the sea a 
short boat, floating with the waves ; and two women therein, won- 
drously formed ; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly to 
the boat, and laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then 
was it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care should 
be of Arthur's departure. The Britons believe that he is yet alive, and 
dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves ; and the Britons ever 
yet expect when Arthur shall return." — (Abridged from the Athe- 

The true history of King Arthur has been overlaid with so many 
absurd fictions by the monkish chroniclers and mediaeval poets and 
romancers, that many have erroneously regarded him as altogether a 
mythical personage. 

The Round Table is described as of marble, and modelled after one 
established by Joseph of Arimathea, in imitation of that which Jesus 
had used at the Last Supper. The existing representative Round Table 
is, however, of wood, and is preserved at Winchester, and hangs upon 
the interior eastern wall of the County Hall. The decorations of the 
table indicate a date not later nor much earlier than the reign of 



86 THE TWO ARTHURS. 

Henry VIII., and the figure of Arthur has been repainted within the 
time of living memory. 

Mr. Buckle gives the following version of this semi-mythic history : 
In the Middle Ages different accounts had been circulated of this 
celebrated king, when Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his History of the 
Britons, ascertained that after the capture of Troy Ascanius fled from 
the city, and begat a son, who became father to Brutus. In those days 
England was peopled by giants, all of whom were slain by Brutus, who, 
having extirpated the entire race, built London, settled the affairs of the 
country, and called it after himself by the name of Britain. Geoffrey 
then relates the actions of a long line of kings who succeeded Brutus, 
and that during the government of Rivallo it rained blood for three 
consecutive days ; and when Morvidus was on the throne the coasts 
were infested by a horrid sea-monster, which, having devoured innumer- 
able persons, at length swallowed the king himself. 

Geoffrey and his friend, Walter of Oxford, then state that King 
Arthur owed his existence to a magical contrivance of Merlin, the cele- 
brated wizard. The subsequent actions of Arthur did not belie his 
supernatural origin. His might nothing was able to withstand. He 
slew an immense number of Saxons ; he overran Norway, invaded Gaul, 
fixed his court at Paris, and made preparations to effect the conquest 
of all Europe. He engaged two giants in single combat, and killed 
them both. One of these giants, who inhabited the Mount of St. 
Michael, was the terror of the whole country, and destroyed all the 
soldiers sent against him, except those he took prisoners in order to eat 
them while they were yet alive. But he fell a victim to the prowess of 
Arthur ; as also did another giant, named Ritho, who was, if possible, 
still more formidable. For Ritho, not content with warring on men of 
the meaner sort, actually clothed himself in furs, which were entirely 
made of the beards of the kings he had killed. 

The work which contains these statements, which, under the name of 
history, was laid before the world in the twelfth century, was consi- 
dered so important a contribution to the national literature, that its 
principal author was raised to the bishopric of Asaph. Within a century 
from its first publication it was generally adopted by writers on English 
history ; and for several centuries only one or two persons ventured to 
speak against its veracity. Polydore Vergil, early in the 16th century, 
repudiated this strange work, for which he was considered almost as a 
man deprived of reason ; and in the next century Boyle classed together 
" the fabulous labours of Hercules and exploits of Arthur of Britain." 
The industrious Sharon Turner has collected a great deal of evidence 
respecting Arthur, " of whose existence," says Mr. Buckle, " he, of 
course, entertains no doubt. Indeed, at p. 292 (Hist. England, vol. i.) 
he gives an account of the discovery, in the twelfth century, of Arthur's 
body !" — (Selected and abridged from Buckle's History of Civilization in 
England, pp. 294-298.) 



burial-place of harold. 87 



ALFRED S TIME-CANDLES. 
In the Life of Alfred, by Asser, we read that before the invention of 
clocks, Alfred caused six tapers to be made for his daily use ; each taper 
containing twelve pennyweights of wax, was twelve inches long, and of 
proportionate breadth. The whole length was divided into twelve 
parts or inches, of which three would burn for one hour, so that each 
taper would be consumed in four hours ; and the six tapers being 
lighted one after the other, lasted for twenty-four hours. But the wind 
blowing through the windows and doors and the chinks of the walls of 
the chapel, or through the cloth of his tent in which they were burning, 
wasted these tapers, and, consequently, they burnt with no regularity! 
He therefore designed a lantern made of ox or cow horn, cut into thin 
plates, in which he inclosed the tapers, and thus protecting them from 
the wind, the period of their burning became a matter of certainty. 

This is an amusing and oft-quoted story ; but, like many other old 
stories, it lacks authenticity. The work of Asser, there is reason to 
believe, is not genuine. (See the arguments in Wright's Biog, Brit. Liu, 
vol. i. pp. 408-412.) It moreover appears that some of the institutions 
popularly ascribed to Alfred existed before his time.— (Kemble's Saxons 
in England?) 

Alfred's acquirements have been variously estimated. His zeal for 
learning was great, but the results unsatisfactory. Mr. Pearson, in his 
History of the Early and Middle Ages, represents Alfred as " probably 
unable to read or. write to his last days, though he repeatedly put him- 
self under masters, and perhaps got so far as to attach a certain sense to 
the words in the little book of prayers which he carried about him ;" 
yet, in the next page, this historian represents Alfred to have attained 
great proficiency. " Above all," he says, " Alfred served in the great 
army of learning himself as a translator. His translations do not pretend 
to servile accuracy: sometimes he expands to explain a difficulty, or 
inserts a fuller account from his own knowledge or from the report of 
travellers at his court ; more often he epitomises, as if he were giving the 
pith of a paragraph that had just been read out to him." It is added 
that " the historical and ethical character of the king's mind is apparent 
in his choice of authors. A translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care was 
executed by the king in partnership with his bishops." 



BURIAL-PLACE OF HAROLD. 

Concerning the much vexed question of the burial-place of Harold, 
there exists among the authorities of the time a good deal of uncertainty 
and contradiction. We find three distinct statements :— 

First. Harold escaped from Hastings, and died long after at Chester 
or elsewhere. 

Second. He was buried on the seashore. 

Third. He was buried at Waltham. 

The first is wretched fable. Florence tells us the true tale in words 



88 BURIAL-PLACE OF HAROLD. 

speaking straight from the heart of England's grief — " Heu, ipsemet 
occidit crepusculi tempore." The son of Godwin died, as such king 
and hero should die, helm on head and battle-axe in hand, striking the 
last blow for his crown and people, with the Holy Rood of Waltham 
the last cry rising from his lips and ringing in his ears. Disabled by the 
Norman arrow, cut down by the Norman sword, he died beneath the 
standard of England, side by side with his brothers in blood and valour. 
What then was the fate of the lifeless relics which alone came into the 
power of the Conqueror ? 

There is. however, strong contemporary, or nearly contemporary, 
evidence in ra^our of both the second and third accounts, and Mr. Free- 
man, in his account of Waltham Abbey {Trans. Essex Arcbaolog. Soc), 
makes an ingenious attempt to reconcile them. " The contemporary 
Norman evidence seems certainly in favour of the belief that Harold was 
buried on the seashore," to " guard the land and sea," as the Conqueror 
is reported to have said in mockery. But there is also strong evidence 
in favour of his burial at Waltham. Even the " Vita Haroldi," which 
adopts the story of his survival, acknowledges that he was supposed to 
be buried at Waltham immediately after the battle, and, in order to 
reconcile these two conflicting statements, conceives that a wrong body 
was buried there in his stead. 

William of Malmesbury is the first writer who speaks of Harold's 
burial at Waltham. Later annalists narrate details of his burial there, 
with regal honours, in the presence of many Norman nobles and gentle- 
men. The supposition that a disinterment took place after Harold had 
been buried in this county is one which there appears no reason for 
discrediting, although some are of opinion that the story is merely tradi- 
tionary, and that it originated in the desire of the monks of Waltham 
to attract visitors to their shrine. 

We quote the above from a paper by the Rev. F. H. Arnold, in the 
Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. 19, to which is appended the fol- 
lowing note: — " Sir Francis Palgrave asks the question, ' Was not the 
tomb at Waltham an empty one ?' On the Bayeux tapestry we see 
Harold falling to the ground, and read the words, ' Hie Harold inter- 
fectus est.' In history his burial succeeds, and then there is usually an 
account of his living long afterwards. Aelred of Rievaulx hints at 
Harold's surviving Senlac or Hastings, and Giraldus Cambrensis, in his 
Itinerary, mentions that the Saxons long cherished a belief that their king 
was alive. According to him, a hermit deeply scarred and blinded in 
his left eye, long dwelt in a cell near the Abbey of St. John at Chester. 
He was visited by Henry I., who had a protracted private discourse 
with him. On his deathbed the King declared that the recluse was 
Harold. The tradition that he was dragged from among the slain, and 
earned off alive, is repeated by Bromton and Knyghton. Sir F. Palgrave 
observes : — " If we compare the different narratives concerning the 
inhumation of Harold, we shall find the most remarkable discrepancies. 
The escape of Harold would solve the difficulty ; the tale, though 
romantic, is not incredible, and the circumstances may easily be recon- 
ciled with probability. But of this story it may be asked, in the words 



PRjE-NORMAN TIMES. 89 

of Fuller, where is the grain of probability to season it ? It is well 
known how fondly a vanquished people will embrace any supposition of 
escape for a popular and native king : 

View not that corpse mistrustfully, 
Defaced and mangled though it be, 
Nor cherish hope in vain. 

After Flodden the idea was long entertained that James IV. survived. 
So was it with respect to Don Sebastian of Portugal ; Frederick, 
Emperor of Germany, and the Greek Emperor, Baldwin of Flanders ; 
and with sucii delusions may be classed the supposed escape of 
Harold." 



ENGLAND, FROM THE ROMAN PERIOD TO THE 
NORMAN INVASION. 

From the Descriptive Catalogue of materials prepared by the Deputy 
Keeper of the Public Records, we learn that the prevalent diseases were 
gout, fever, plague and yellow plague, king's evil, leprosy, imposthume, 
and epilepsy, and exceptional cases such as hydrophobia. We learn 
also what were the various methods of cure, medicine, bleeding, cupping, 
plasters, fomentations, and ointments ; the use of anaesthetics and an 
operation in lithotomy. St. Erkenwald had a two-wheeled car con- 
structed after he lost the use of his legs, and among other instances of 
surgical mechanism, we read of a copper foot and a silver hand made to 
supply the loss of the natural members. In one part we are introduced 
to St. Hugh, carrying his hod while engaged in building Lincoln Minster ; 
and St. Wilfrid, rearing at Hexham a church with four apses turned to 
the cardinal points. We are enabled to trace the progress of the archi- 
tecture from the modest fabric of wicker, and the jealousy towards 
Irish workmen shown by cutting off the head of a clever carpenter of 
that nation ; we then find the church of stone, still later the introduc- 
tion of a leaden roof, and lastly the employment of English marbles, 
cloth of gold and embroidery for altars, and the ornamentation of walls 
with pictures of saints on parchment ; shrines of silver, sculptured plates 
of gold, dainty MSS. written on purple vellum in letters of the same 
precious metal by the fair fingers of devout ladies, organs and bells, 
stained glass, and decorative painting, and quaint models of limbs made 
in wax as votive offerings. 

The great and noble were buried in stone, the humbler dead were 
laid below the turf in coffins of wood ; the northern side of a cemetery 
was an object of dislike, and economical folks set aside Roman sarco- 
phagi for their own interment. We meet with descriptions of the 
grotesque carving common in churches, the miracle play acted round 
the cemetery cross, the importation of marble from Rome for pave- 
ments ; of Caen stone for Westminster Palace and St. Augustine's, 
Canterbury, in vessels having only one mast and one sail, and covered 
with tanned hides, unloading at Bramber. When an Anglo-Saxon 
noble entertained a bishop, he hung his hall with shields of gold, strewed 



9 o THE NEW FOREST. 

his courtyard and door-steps with roses and lilies, furnished horns of 
mead and barrels of wine innumerable, and placed him on the couch 
with his own hands and cherished his feet in his bosom. 

Bells and sea-banks, drainage and brewing, the use of marl to improve 
land, ordeals, penal punishments, the plays of children, are all inciden- 
tally commemorated, while from these unpromising sources we learn 
two historical facts nowhere else recorded, that many Anglo-Saxon 
nobles went into exile after the Norman invasion and took service there 
in preference to servility at home, and that Dunstan collected the few 
fragments of Anglo-Saxon MSS. which remained after the wholesale 
destruction of the monastic libraries by the Danes. 



DID WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR DEPOPULATE THE 

NEW FOREST ? 

It is very difficult to look at the New Forest without feeling inclined 
to question the justice of the popular opinion about the devastations 
laid to the charge of William the Conqueror. An immense proportion 
of the ground is utterly worthless for any purpose whatever, even in the 
present day. Large tracts of it are more profitable as woodland than 
they would be in any other shape, and it is altogether inconceivable that 
it should ever have been otherwise than a very barren region. The 
whole population of England is supposed at the time of the Conquest to 
have been under rather than over 2,000,000, and it is impossible to sup- 
pose that when it was so thin elsewhere, it can have been dense in that 
particular spot. Besides this, it would not appear, from the best autho- 
rities upon the subject, that the Norman forests were mere wilder- 
nesses. We have a very curious and complete account of their organi- 
zation in Manwood's work on the Laws of the Forest. Some of his 
authorities claim, truly or not, to be as ancient as the days of Canute. 
It is impossible not to infer from many parts of the book that the forests 
anciently supported a considerable population, for there was a complete 
judicial and executive system for their especial use. The Courts of 
Swanimote and Justice Seat were attended by those who lived in the 
forest, much as the Courts Baron and Courts Leet were attended by the 
men of manors and hundreds. The various rights of agistment, pan- 
nage, and the like which are minutely specified, and the obligation 
under which the rangers were placed of making " drifts " — that is, of 
driving off all cattle depasturing in the forest — at certain periods of the 
year, imply the existence of a pretty numerous population, supported 
principally by cattle-breeding within the forest bounds. Indeed, some 
considerable part of the soil over which the king held forestal rights 
was — subject to those rights — the property of private persons. For 
these reasons, we should be inclined to suppose that the hardship 
inflicted by William the Conqueror consisted rather in the strictness 
and harshness of his system of forest administration than in a depopu- 
lation which would have been both needless and cruel, not to say 
impossible.— Saturday Review. 



DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 91 



The remains of the Conqueror have been most indecorously treated 
bv his posterity, as if in derision of his conventional greatness. His 
burial in the Church of St. Stephen, at Caen, with its strange combi- 
nation of awful, ludicrous, and disgusting incidents, is an often-told 
tale. The tomb was destroyed by the Huguenots, and the remains ot 
William were as thoroughly scattered to the winds as those of Harold 
or Waltheof. A single bone was recovered at the Restoration tor 
which a new tomb was made, and which has again been destroyed and 
repaired more than once. The present plain slab is, it is believed, 
merely a cenotaph. ^ 

DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 
" King William, notwithstanding forewarned by many signs of some 
great disaster towards him, would need the day after Lammas, go 
hunting in the New Forest ; yet, something relenting the many passages, 
he stayed withrn all the afternoon. About dinner-time, an artificer 
brought him six cross-bow arrows, very strong and sharp ; whereof 
four he kept himself, and the other two he delivered to Sir Walter 
Tyrrell, a knight of Normandy, his bow-bearer, saying, " Here, 
Tyrrell' take you two, for you know how to shoot them to purpose. 
And so having at dinner drank more liberally than his custom, as it 
were in contempt of presages, out he rode unto the New Forest, where 
Sir Walter Tyrrell shooting at a deer, at a place called Charmgham 
(where since a chapel hath been erected), the arrow glanced against a 
tree or, as some write, grazed upon the back of the deer, and flying 
forward, hit the King upon the breast ; with which he instantly tell 
down dead. Thus it is delivered by common consent of all : only one 
Sugerus, a writer who lived at that time, and was a familiar acquain- 
tance of Tyrrell's, against the current of all writers, affirms that he hath 
often heard the said Walter swear that he was not in the forest with the 
King all that day." " I have been," adds Sir R. Baker, " longer upon 
this point, because a more pregnant example of God's judgment remains 
not anywhere upon record. For not only this King, at this time, but 
before this, a brother of his named Richard, a young prince of great 
hope and also a nephew of his, came all in this place to violent deaths ; 
that although King William, the founder of the forest, escaped the 
punishment in his own person, yet it was doubled and trebled upon him 
in his issue. , . , c . . 

" Thus died King William Rufus, in the forty-third year of his age, 
and twelfth and some months of his reign. His body was drawn in a 
collier's cart, with one horse, to the city of Winchester, where the day 
following it was buried in the cathedral church of St. Swithern, and 
was laid there in the choir, under a marble stone, till afterwards it was 
translated, and laid by King Canute's bones." 

Baker's description of the King's "Personage and Condition is as 
follows: "He was but of mean stature, thick and square-bodied, his 
belly swelling somewhat round; his face was red, his hair deep yellow, 
wherefore he was called Rufus ; his forehead four-square like a window; 



92 DEATH OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 

his eyes spotted, and not one like another ; his speech unpleasant and 
stammering, especially when he was moved with anger. Concerning 
the qualities of his mind, they may best be known by looking upon the 
actions of his life ; in which we shall find that he never was more assured 
than when he was least sure ; never less dejected than when in most ex- 
tremity ; being like a cube, that which way soever he fell, he was still 
upon his bottom. For his delight to pass the time, there was none in 
more request with him than hunting, a delight hereditary to him ; 
which was the cause that as his father had begun the great New Forest, so 
he enlarged it to a far greater extent. Other delights of his we find not 
any,unless we shall reckon his wars for delights, for though they were often- 
times forced upon him, when he could not avoid them, yet sometimes 
he entered into them when he needed not but for his pleasure. And in 
general it may be said one of his greatest virtues was that which is 
one of the greatest virtues — magnanimity ; and his worst vice was that 
which is the worst of vices — irreligion." 

In the year 1806, the spot in the new forest where Rufuswas killed was 
visited by Mr. (subsequently Sir Richard) Phillips. Desirous of inquir- 
ing after local tradition on the subject, he applied at a cottage about 100 
yards distant, and the only dwelling in sight, when, to his astonishment, 
he found that the family living in it bore the name of Purkis, the same 
as that of the charcoal-burner, who, in 1 100. lived on the same spot, and 
conveyed the king's body in his cart to Winchester. On further inquiry, 
he learned that they were the same family, and had, from that time, not 
only lived on the same site, but to that day, pursued the same occupation 
of making charcoal, and conveying it by a cart to Southampton and 
other towns. It appeared, also, that till within two or three years they^ 
had preserved a wheel of the cart in which Rufus was conveyed ; but the 
then possessor having quarrelled with the next heir, came home one even- 
ing, much intoxicated, and burnt the wheel. 

Pursuing his inquiries, Sir Richard learned that the family still possessed 
the bridle which was on the king's horse, and which, on the king's fall, 
and on the flight of Tyrrell and his attendants, fell into Purkis's hands ; 
but as the then master of the dwelling had endeavoured to destroy the 
bridle, his wife concealed it, and described it as lost. Sir Richard pur- 
chased the bridle, which is true Norman, and of the same fashion as the 
ornamented bridles still in use in the northern provinces of France. 

Upon the site of the king's fall in the forest there was set up a memo- 
rial stone in the year 1744 ; but this becoming mutilated, it was 
cased over with fresh stone, which bears these inscriptions : — 

On one side : " Here stood the oak-tree, on which an arrow, shot by 
sir Walter Tyrrel at a stag, glanced, and struck king William the Se- 
cond, surnamed Rufus, on the breast: of which he instantly dieo^on the 
2nd day of August, uooc" On the second side are these words : "King 
William the Second, surnamed Rufus, being slain, as before related, was 
laid in a cart belonging to one Purkis, and drawn from hence to Win- 
chester, and buried in the cathedral church of that city." On the third 
side : " That the spot where an event so memorable might not hereafter 
be forgotten, the enclosed stone was set up by John lord Delaware, 



THE WAPSHOTTS OF CHERTSEY. 93 

who had seen the tree grow in this place." " This stone having been 
much mutilated, and the inscriptions on each of the three sides defaced, 
this more durable memorial, with the original inscriptions, was erected 
in the year 184^." The memorial stone is about six feet high : it may- 
be seen by looking on the top of the present monument : there were bars 
of iron laid across, through the openings between which can be seen the 
top of the original stone. 



THE KNIGHT TEMPLARS. 

The historical treatment of the noble fraternity of the Temple is by 
no means creditable to its writers. They are reviled by way of record, 
as they were tortured by their cruel persecutors. The order was insti- 
tuted about 1 1 17 or iii8, and they were called Templers, says an 
heraldic manuscript in the British Museum, " for that they were placed 
in a house adjoining to, or near to, the Temple of Jerusalem, by vow 
and profession, to bear and wage war against the pagans and infidels, 
and keep from spoil and profanation the sacred sepulchre of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, attempted by Turks, Saracens, and Argarins, 
and other barbarous miscreants, pursuing with malice and hostility 
Christians, and infesting Palestine, or the Holy Land, with cruelty, 
homicide, and bloodshed." The fraternity was instituted by two 
crusaders, who were at first joined by seven other persons only ; but 
eventually the brotherhood increased to such a degree, and became so 
renowned for valour, that the most illustrious nobility in Christendom 
deemed it an honour to be admitted to their order. Matthew Paris 
must not, however, be numbered with their friends, for he states that 
although they at first lived upon alms, and were so poor that one horse 
served two of them (as was apparent from their seal), yet they suddenly 
waxed so insolent that they disdained other orders, and sorted them- 
selves with noblemen. 

Mills observes, in a note to his History of Chivalry : — " The Templars 
find no favour in the eyes of the author of Ivanhoe and Tales of the 
Crusaders. He has imbibed all the vulgar prejudices of the order, and 
when he wants a villain to form the shadow of his scene, he as regularly 
and unscrupulously resorts to the fraternity of the Temple as other 
novelists refer to the Church or to Italy for a similar purpose." So 
much for the tendency of historical romance-writing. 



THE WAPSHOTTS OF CHERTSEY. 

Near Saint Anne's Hill, in Surrey, is Almners' Barns, which name is 
supposed to have been derived from the former appropriation of this 
estate to the Almoners of Chertsey Abbey, it having belonged to that 
foundation. For a long series of years this property was occupied by the 
Wapshott family, both as tenants to the Abbots of Chertsey and to the 
Crown. It has indeed been said, but certainly on very questionable 
grounds, that " they continued to cultivate the same spot of earth from 



94 CHARACTER OF OUR NORMAN KINGS. 

generation to generation, ever since the reign of Alfred, by whom the 
farm on which they lived was granted to Reginald Wapshott, their 
ancestor." We believe there to be no authority for this long holding ; 
but that the Wapshotts were actually resident here some centuries ago 
is traditionally acknowledged; and a document was shown by the 
solicitor of Sir Joseph Mawbey, to Mr. John Wapshott, of Chertsey, 
their descendant, who had to give up his farm in 1828, proving their 
occupation of Almners' Bams upwards of 500 years previously. The 
common story, often repeated, sets their tenancy at one thousand years. 
There are in the county some existing instances of ancient holdings. 
Thus, the Marquis of Winchester and Lord Bolton, the descendants 
of Hugh Part, still hold manors in Hampshire, which during eight 
centuries have never been severed from the family, to which also 
Sir St. John Mildmay belongs. The manor of Nunwell is still 
in the possession of the O glanders, the first of whom, Richard de 
Okelander, came over with William I. from Caen, and reduced the 
Isle of Wight. 



CHARACTER OF OUR NORMAN KINGS. 
We must not class the Normans amongst barbarians, since they came 
to us after they had been somewhat civilized and Christianized in 
France. General report gives them credit for being somewhat more 
civilized than the Saxons whom they conquered. But if we read the 
pages of the industrious Lappenberg, we shall not rise from his History 
of our Norman Kings with any great respect for the civilization of the 
Normans. The gold cup, the suit of armour, the robe of state, they 
knew how to purloin and appropriate; they set others to build for 
them ; whether we are absolutely indebted to them for anything that 
really advances the civilization of a country, seems doubtful. Their 
only art of government was to conquer and subdue, and keep as much 
power as possible in one single hand. There is a period in the life of 
nations, when the establishment of this harsh dominion is very service- 
able. In this light the Norman Conquest may have been beneficial, 
tending to unite the people into one strong nation. So far as personal 
influence was concerned, we were indebted only to such men as Anselm 
and Lanfranc, Italians by birth, but who may be called Norman 
bishops. " Anselm," says Lappenberg, " was one of those heroes of 
love and humility which Christianity has produced in every age." 
Lanfranc reminds us of his successor in a subsequent century, Cranmer ; 
honest and good in the main, but having something of the wisdom of 
the serpent. Both Anselm and Lanfranc were amongst the most learned 
men of their respective ages. For the Norman kings, they seem to have 
had no virtue but bravery, and an occasional generosity in giving with 
one hand what they pillaged with the other. Richard I., the most 
popular of the series, was, as Sismondi tersely says, " a bad son, a bad 
husband, a bad brother, and a bad king ;" but he was the bravest of 
knights, and his companions in arms loved him with a kind of idolatry. 
Mr. WhUe does not spare any of them : — " They were sensual, cruel, 



STORY OF FAIR ROSAMOND. 95 



and unprincipled to a degree unusual even in those ages of rude manners 
and undeveloped conscience. Their personal appearance itself was an 
index of the ungovernable passions within. Fat, broad-shouldered, low- 
statured, red-haired, loud-voiced, they were frightful to look upon, 
even in their calmest moods ; but when the Conqueror stormed, no 
feeling of ruth or reverence stood in his way. When he was refused 
the daughter of the Count of Boulogne, he forced his way into the 
chamber of the Countess, seized her by the hair of her head, dragged 
her round the room, and stamped on her with his feet ; Robert, his son, 
was of the same uninviting exterior ; William Rums was little and very 
stout [no great harm in that] ; Henry II. was gluttonous and de- 
bauched ; Richard the Lionheart was cruel as the animal that gave him 
name ; and John was the most debased and contemptible of mankind."* 



THE STORY OF FAIR ROSAMOND. 
Rosamond, the fayre daughter of Walter, Lord Clifford, concubine 
of Henry II., poisoned by Queen Eleanor, as some have thought, died 
at Woodstock, in 11 77, where King Henry had made for her a home of 
wonderful working, so that no man or woman might come to her, but 
he that was intrusted by the King, or such as were right secret with him 
touching the matter. This " house " was a Maze, consisting of vaults 
underground, arched and walled with brick and stone. 

Miss Strickland, in her Lives of the Queens of England, has this in- 
teresting note upon the Maze. " As to the labyrinth, or maze at Wood- 
stock, it most likely existed before the time of Rosamond, and remained 
after her death, since all pleasances or gardens in the Middle Ages were 
contrived with this adjunct. Traces of them exist to this day in the 
names of places near royal palaces : witness, Maize-hill, Greenwich, near 
the site of the maze or labyrinth of Greenwich Palace ; also the Maze 
in Southwark, once part of the garden of the Princess Mary Tudor's 
palace." We have evidence that Edward III., (between whom and the 
death of Rosamond little more than a century intervened), familiarly called 
a structure pertaining to Woodstock Palace, " Rosamond's Chamber," 
the locality of which is minutely described in the Fader a, vol. i. p. 269. 
In this document he directs William de Montacute " to order various 
repairs at his Manor of Woodstock ; and that the house beyond the 
gate in the new wall be built again, and that same chamber called 
Rosamond's chamber, be restored as before, and crystal plates, and 
marble, and lead to be provided for it." Here is an indisputable proof 
that there was a structure called Rosamond's chamber, distinct from 
Woodstock Palace, yet belonging to its domain, being a building situated 
beyond the park- wall. Edward III. passed the first years of his mar- 
riage principally at Woodstock, therefore he well knew the localities, 
which will agree with the old chroniclers, if we suppose Rosamond's 
residence was approached by a tunnel under the park- wall. 



* Eighteen Christian Centurus. 



$6 S.TORY OF FAIR ROSAMOND. 

It was commonly said that " the Queen came to Rosamond by a clue of 
threidde or silke, and so dealt with her that she lived not long after." It 
is observable, however, that none of the old writers attribute Rosamond's 
death to poison (Stow merely mentions it as a slight conjecture) ; they 
only give us to understand that the queen treated her harshly; with 
furious menaces and sharp expostulations, we may suppose, but used 
neither dagger nor bowl. Brompton says, " she lived with Henry a long 
time after he had imprisoned Eleanor;" and Carte, in his History of 
England, vol. i. p. 659, goes far to prove that Rosamond was not 
poisoned by the queen (which popular legend was based on no other 
authority than an old ballad) ; but, that through grief at the defection of 
her royal admirer, she retired from the world, and became a nun at 
Godstow, where she lived twenty years. 

How the queen gained admittance into Rosamond's bower is dif- 
ferently related. Holinshed speaks of it as the common report of the 
people, that " the queene found hir out by a silken thridde, which the 
kinge had drawne after him out of hir chamber with his foote, and dealt 
with her in such sharpe and cruell wise that she lived not long after. 
Brompton says, that one day Queen Eleanor saw the king walking in 
the pleasance of Woodstock, with the end of a ball of floss silk attached 
to his spur ; coming near him unperceived, she took up the ball, and the 
king walking on, the silk unwound, and thus the queen traced him to a 
thicket in the labyrinth or maze of the park, where he disappeared. She 
kept the matter a secret, often revolving in her own mind in what com- 
pany he could meet with balls of silk. Soon after the king left Wood- 
stock for a distant journey ; then Queen Eleanor, bearing her discovery 
in mind, searched the thicket in the park, and discovered a low door 
cunningly concealed ; this door she forced, and found it was the en- 
trance to a winding subterranean path, which led out at a distance to a 
sylvan lodge in the most retired part of the adjacent forest." 

Speed, on the other hand, tells us that the jealous queen found Rosa- 
mond out by " a clewe of silke " fallen from her lap, as she sat taking 
air, and suddenly fleeing from the sight of the searcher, the end of 
the clewe still unwinding, remained behind, which the Queen followed 
till she found what she sought, and upon Rosamond so vented her spleen 
that she did not live long after. Another story, in a popular ballad, is 
that the clue was gained by surprise from the knight who was left to 
guard the bower. 

Rosamond was buried at Godstow, " in a house of nunnes, beside 
Oxford," with these verses upon her tombe : — 

Hie jacet in tumba, Rosa mundi, non Rosa munda ; 
Non redolet, sed olet, quae redolere solet. 

Stow's Annals, ed. 1631, p. 154. 

This tomb doth here enclose the world's most beauteous rose, 
Rose passing sweet erewhile — now nought but odour vile. 

Speed. 

Her body was buried in the middle of the choir in the chapel of the 
nunnery, at Godstow, in which place it remained until the year 1191, 
when Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, caused it to be removed. 



STORY OF FAIR ROSAMOND. 97 

Stow thus relates the circumstances. " When Hugh, Bishop of Lin- 
colne, had entered the church to pray, he saw a tombe in the middle of 
the quire, covered with a pall of silke, and set about with lights of waxe ; 
and demanding whose tombe it was, he was answered, that it was the 
tombe of Rosamond, that was some time lemman to Henry II. . . . who 
for the love of her had done much good to that church. Then, quoth 
the bishop, take out of this place the harlot, and bury her without the 
church, lest Christian religion should grow in contempt, to the end that, 
through example of her, other women being made afraid, may beware 
and keepe themselves from unlawful and adventurous company with 
men." 

The body was then buried in the chapter-house, or in the cloisters 
(historians differ on this point), and though after her removal there 
were not the same ornaments about her as before, yet the nuns inclosed 
the bones in a perfumed leather bag, which they afterwards inclosed in 
a leaden coffin, over which a tomb different from the former was laid, 
being a fair large stone, I suppose in form of a coffin, agreeable to those 
times ; on which was put this inscription, Tumba Rosamundas ; thus 
it continued till about the time of the Dissolution, when it was taken up 
and broken to pieces. The remains of the tomb are still to be seen in 
the old ruined chapel of the nunnery, of which a view is given in Grose's 
Antiquities. Thus wrote Dugdale, in his Monasticon. 

In the French Chronicle of London* we find, however, another legend 
of Rosamond's death. The Queen had her taken, and stripped all naked, 
and made her sit between two great fires, in a chamber quite closed, so 
that this very beauteous damsel was quite terrified, for she thought for 
certain she should be burnt, and began to be in great sorrow by reason 
thereof. 

"And in the meantime the Queen had caused a bath to be prepared, 
and then made the beauteous damsel enter therein ; and forthwith she 
made a wicked old hag beat this beauteous damsel upon both her 
arms with a staff ; and then, so soon as ever the blood gushed forth, 
there came another execrable sorceress, and brought two frightful toads 
upon a trowel, and put them upon the breasts of the gentle damsel ; 
whereupon they immediately seized her breasts and began to suck. Two 
other old hags held her arms stretched out, so that the beauteous damsel 
might not be able to sink down into the water until all the blood that 
was in her body had run out. And all the time that the filthy toads 
were sucking her breasts, the Queen laughed, and mocked her, and had 
great joy in her heart in being thus revenged upon Rosamund. And 
when she was dead, the queen had the body taken and buried in a filthy 
ditch, and with the body the toads. 

" But when the King heard how the Queen had acted towards the 
damsel he so greatly loved, he made great lamentation : ' Alas ! for my 
grief; what shall I do for the most beauteous Rosamond? For never 
was her peer found for beauty, disposition, and courtliness.' The King 



* Translation, by Riley, it 
H 



98 STORY OF FAIR ROSAMOND. 

desired to know what had become of the body ; he caused one of the 
wicked sorceresses to be seized, and had her put into great straights, that 
she might tell him all the truth as to what they had done with the gentle 
damsel ; and he swore by Almighty God that if she should lie in any 
word she should have as shocking a sentence as man could devise. 

"Then the old hag told the King all the truth, and where the 
body could be found. And in the meantime, the queen had the 
body of the most beauteous damsel taken up, and commanded 
the body to be carried to a house of religion which has ' Gode- 
stowe ' for name, near Oxenforde, at a distance of two leagues 
therefrom ; and had the body of Rosamonde there buried, to colour 
her evil deeds, so that no one might perceive the horrid and too 
shameful deeds which the Queen had done, and she might exculpate 
herself from the death of this most gentle damsel. 

" And then King Henry began to ride towards Wodestocke, where 
Rosamonde, whom he loved so much at heart, was so treacherously 
murdered by the Queen. And, as the King was riding towards Wode- 
stocke, he met the dead body of Rosamonde, strongly enclosed within a 
chest, that was well and strongly bound with iron. And the King forth- 
with demanded whose corpse it was. Then they made answer to him, 
that it was the corpse of the most beauteous Rosamond. And when 
King Henry heard this, he instantly ordered them to open the chest, that 
he might behold the body that had been so vilely martyred. Imme- 
diately thereupon, they did the King's command, and showed him the 
corpse of Rosamond, who was so hideously put to death. And when 
King Henry saw the whole truth thereof, through great grief, he fell 
fainting to the ground, and lay there in a swoon for a long time before 
any one could have converse with him. 

" And when the King awoke from his swoon, he spoke, and he 
swore a great oath, that he would take full vengeance for the most 
horrid felony which, for great spite, had upon the gentle damsel been 
committed. Then began the King to lament and to give way to great 
sorrow for the most beauteous Rosamond, whom he loved so much at 
heart. ' Alas ! for my grief,' said he. ' Sweet Rosamond, never was thy 
peer, never so sweet, nor so beauteous a creature to be found ; may then 
the sweet God, who abides in Trinity, on the soul of sweet Rosamond 
have mercy, and may He pardon her all her misdeeds ; very God 
Almighty, Thou who art the end and the beginning, suffer not now that 
this soul shall in horrible torment come to perish, and grant unto her 
true remission for all her sins, for Thy great mercy's sake.' 

"And when he had thus prayed, he commanded them forthwith to 
ride straight on to Godestowe, with the body of the lady, and there had 
her burial celebrated in that religious home of nuns ; and there did he 
appoint thirteen chaplains to sing for the soul of the said Rosamonde, 
so long as the world shall last. In this religious house of Godestowe, 
I tell you for truth, lieth the fair Rosamonde burried. May very God 
Almighty of her soul have mercy. Amen." 

In the old ballad the death of Rosamond is attributed to the Queen i 



STORY OF THE LION KING. 



99 



But nothing could this furious queen 

Therewith appeased bee ; 
The cup of deadly e poyson stronge, 

As she knelt on her knee, 

She gave this comelye dame to drinke ; 

Who took it in her hand, 
And from her bended knee arose 

And on her feet did stand. 

And casting up her eyes to heaven, 

She did for mercye calle ; 
And drinking up the poyson stronge, 

Her life she lost withalle. 

And when that death through every limbe 

Had showde its greatest spite, 
Her chiefest foes did plaine confesse 

She was a glorious wight. 

Her body then they did entomb, 

When life was fled away, 
At Godstowe, neare to Oxford towne, 

As may be seen this day. 

Of the nunnery at Godstow only a small chapel with a portion of the 
outward walls remain. 



STORY OF THE LION KING. 

Richard I., the most barbarous of our princes, was known to his con- 
temporaries as The Lion ; an appellation conferred upon him on account 
of his fearlessness, and the ferocity of his temper. Hence it was said 
that he had the heart of a lion ; and the title Cceur de Lion not only be- 
came indissolubly connected with his name, but actually gave rise to a 
story, repeated by innumerable writers, according to which he slew a 
lion in single combat. The name gave rise to the story ; the story con- 
firmed the name ; and another fiction was added to that long series of 
falsehoods of which history mainly consisted during the Middle Ages. 
The chronicler of Richard's crusade says that he was called Lion on ac- 
count of his never pardoning an offence. Some of the Egyptian 
kings received the name of Lion " from their heroic exploits." I 
should not be surprised if the story of Alexander and the Lion (Thirl- 
cvoalls History of Greece, vol. i. p. 305) were equally fabulous. 

Richard's reign is remarkable also for the absence of other superior 
men. Short as it was, it did not witness the declining glories of the 
statesmen of Henry, nor form a school of training for those who were 
to resist King John. The former were spent and worn out in the very 
beginning of it. Of the latter it would be difficult, says Mr. Stubbs, (in 
the Chronicles and Memorials , edited from a MS. in the library of Corpus 
Christi, Cambridge) to mention any, except William Marshall, who 
occupy even a secondary place of interest in the reign of Richard. It 
has its warriors and politicians all to itself, and the roll of the latter 
is not a long one. Hubert Walter, William Longchamp, Walter of 

H 2 



ioo STORY OF THE LION KING. 



Coutances, Geoffrey of Fitzpeter, and William Marshall were about all 
In the class of warriors the king himself throws all others into the 
second rank. Few of his companions were native Englishmen, or even 
Ang hazed Normans. The chief field of their exploits was too remote 
and the time of their adventure too short for them to produce any effect 
on the national character, and that produced by the character of Richard 
himself was neither immediate nor direct. The siege of Acre used uo 
the brave men that his father had left him, and his French wars those 
whom he had himself formed in the triumphs and troubles of the Holy 
if? ^ w 3 ?, th / C / eation and im P er sonation of his own age ; and 
that, though full of character and adventure, was short and transitory 
in its very essence. 7 

Still, the interest of Richard's reign does not consist exclusively of 
the mere details of adventure or character. The reader who will follow 
him will be brought into contact with a variety of men and complica- 
tions of polities unequalled in interest by those of many longer and more 
important reigns. The crusade brings east and west together. The 
family connexions of the king involve him in the conflicting interests of 
Italy, France Germany, and Spain. His personal adventures open up 
the whole political history of the age. The dominions in which he 
exercised real or nominal sway were more diversified in character and 
circumstances than those of any prince of his time; from Scotland to 
Cyprus, and from Normandy to Palestine. In his continental dominions 
confronted by an unwearied enemy in Philip of France; in Sicily in- 
volved in quarrels with both the Norman Tancred and the German 
Henry; m Cyprus, not only startling the fitful lethargy of the Eastern 
Empire, which almost thought that the yellow-haired King of the West 
was coming, before whom the golden gate of Constantinople was to open 
■ 'u! u W " 1 aCC °f d V but affordin g a g ro und of accusation to enemies who 
might be thought far enough removed from the interest of the Comneni • 
drawing on himself envy in Palestine by his superior prowess or by his 
utter want of tact alienating the good-will of every Prince of East or 
West with whom he had to do ; with no policy abroad any more than 
at home, and his foreign relations as anomalous and unquiet as his 
domestic ones ; such opportunities and hazards surrounded him with an 
energetic circle of notables who were either his friends or foes but 
mostly his foes. And with all this, besides the undoubted influence 
which his personal character gave him in his own dominions he had 
power to place one of his nephews on the throne of Godfrey of Bouillon 
and another on the throne of Charles the Great. 

Great interest has been concentrated on Richard from these divers points 
of view. We know what Englishman, Norman, Frenchman, German 
Greek, and Mussulman thought about him; and it is no wonder conl 
sidenng the number of princes whom he either outshone by his exploits 
or offended by his pride, or injured by active aggression, or who havine 
injured him, hated him with the pertinacity of injustice, that his cha- 
racter has fared badly in the hands of foreign chroniclers. 

The German historians describe Richard as a monster of pride and 
arrogance j the French as the most perfidious of men. " Anglicanam 



KING JOHN VINDICATED. joi 

itaque perfdiam detestantes" says Otto of St. Blaise, a partisan of the 
Emperor and Duke Leopold, after the surrender of Acre, on the insult 
offered to the Duke's flag. And Ansbert, though with more modera- 
tion, says, " dominium sibi super omnes usurpabat. . . . Rex Anglic 
Richardus, qui gloria omnes anteire cona<vit, et omnium indignationem 
meruit!' But the Germans have envenomed their calumny with a hatred 
that is absent altogether from the French historians, and, what is more 
to the point, they look upon him as an Englishman, and involve his 
country in his condemnation. — Abridged from The Times. 



THE CRUSADES AND CHIVALRY. 

It has been well remarked, with respect to the historic field of the 
Crusades and Chivalry, that poetry, or mere works of imagination, may 
have a great effect on the real manners of an age. In chivalry we 
have an instance how a quite ideal picture of manners may be imitated 
to some degree, and thus the fictitious history of a past time produce a 
real history bearing some faint resemblance to it. Sismondi has observed, 
that the more we look into this matter the more clearly shall we perceive 
that the system of chivalry is an invention almost entirely poetical. " It 
is always represented," he shrewdly observes, " as distant from us both 
in time and place ; and whilst the contemporary historian gives us a 
clear, detailed, and complete account of the vices of the court and the 
great, of the ferocity or corruption of the nobles, and of the servility of 
the people, we are astonished to find the poets, after a long lapse of time, 
adorning the very same ages with the most splendid fictions of grace, 
virtue, and loyalty." The romance-writers of the twelfth century 
placed the age of chivalry in the time of Charlemagne. This very age 
of the twelfth century was pointed to with envy by Francis I. Times 
nearer our own have thought that chivalry flourished in the persons of Du 
Guesclin and Bayard. But though, if we examine any of these periods, 
we shall certainly not find the ideal of chivalry, we shall find in some 
of them an influence of this ideal on the manners of the age. When 
our Edward the Black Prince treated his royal prisoner with osten- 
tatious respect and deference, he was probably translating fiction, 
as well as he could, into reality. Amongst the multitude of powers, lay 
and spiritual, that are seen in action throughout the Europe of the 
middle ages, let the poet, too, have his place. 

Mr. Kingsley gives us this new view of Chivalry. The ideal of knight- 
hood arose, he says, to supply the defects of the ideal of Monkhood. 
"It asserted the possibility of consecrating the whole manhood, and not 
merely a few faculties thereof, to God : and it thus contained the first 
germ of that Protestantism which conquered at the Reformation." 



KING JOHN VINDICATED. 
John exacted great sums of money from the Jews, with great cruelty. 
There was one Jew who would not be ransomed, till the king caused 



102 KING JOHN VINDICATED. 

every one of his great teeth to be pulled out by the space of seven days, 
and then he was content to give the king 10,000 marks of silver, that 
no more might be pulled out, for he had but one tooth left ! — Baker's 
Chronicle. 

Mr. Chad wick, who has written a volume in vindication of King John, 
refutes this charge by quoting a number of charters in which the king 
forgives to various persons the debts they owe to the Jews. This Mr. 
Chadwick strangely takes as proving his hero's special kindness to the 
Hebrew race. He seems at any rate to fancy that John paid the Jews 
himself. The truth of course is that the Jews and all their goods were 
the king's property ; what they held they held by his sufferance ; he 
could seize their goods when he pleased ; a debt, then, owing to a Jew 
was really a debt owing to the king ; the king could therefore forgive 
such a debt, and the Jew had to go without his money. — Saturday Re- 
•view. 

Sir Richard Baker, in giving the " Personage and Condition " of King 
John, has made his as little disreputable as he well could. He tells us 
that " he was of stature indifferent tall, and something fat, of a sour and 
angry countenance. Concerning his conditions, it may be said that his na- 
ture and his fortune did not well agree ; for naturally he loved his ease, 
yet his fortune was to be ever in action. He won more of his enemies 
by surprises than by battles, which shows that he had more of lightning 
in him than of thunder. He was never so true of his word as when he 
threatened, because he meant always as cruelly as he spake, not always 
as graciously ; and he that would have known what it was he never meant 
to perform, must have looked upon his promises. He was neither fit 
for prosperity nor adversity ; for prosperity made him insolent, and ad- 
versity dejected ; a mean fortune would have suited best with him. He 
was all thathe was by fits : sometimes doing nothing without deliberation, 
and sometimes doing all upon a sudden; sometimes very religious, and 
sometimes scarce a Christian. His unsatiableness of money was not so 
much, as that no man knew what he did with it ; gotten with much 
noise but spent in silence. He was but intemperate in his best temper, 
but when distempered most of all, as appeared at his last ; when, being 
in a fever, he would needs be eating of raw peaches, and drinking of 
sweet ale. If we look upon his works, we must needs think him a 
worthy prince, but, if upon his actions, nothing less ; for his works of 
piety were very many ; but, as for his actions, he neither came to the 
crown by justice, nor held it with honour, nor left it with peace. Yet, 
having had many good parts in him, and especially having his royal pos- 
terity continued to this day, we can do no less but honour his memory." 

Such is Baker's character of the monarch. In his defence, it has been 
urged that "if a sensible writer chose to sit down to show that King 
John was not the fool or the coward which he is generally described, 
we think it is very likely that he might in some degree succeed. John 
became so early an object of traditional dislike that there is every pro- 
bability that the popular picture of him is an exaggerated one. And 
there are contradictions about his character as generally drawn ; some 
actions of his life do not at all agree with the notion of his mere folly 



THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 103 

and cowardice. Some of the popular stories about him come from late 
and untrustworthy writers, and some of the details of the contemporary 
writers can be shown to be inaccurate by the evidence of records. Here, 
then, is really some ground to go upon ; it would probably not be very 
difficult to show that King John was not quite so black as he is painted. 
But to show this is a very different matter from setting up John as a 
perfect sovereign, and loading Stephen Langton with every possible epi- 
thet of abuse. To upset the Great Charter, to show that its authors 
were rogues and the Charter itself waste paper, requires a very strong 
hand indeed. 

'"In truth it is too late in the day far any man to try to show that the 
Great Charter was all humbug. Oliver Cromwell spoke irreverently of 
it only because it stood in the way of some of his own doings. Roger 
of Wendover certainly calls the leaders of the barons ' principales hujus 
pestis incentores,' a form which Matthew Paris alters to the gentler 
' prassumptionis.' But even Roger does not speak disrespectfully of 
the charter itself." — Saturday Review. 



ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. — MAGNA 
CHARTA. 

Soon after the middle of the eleventh century, and therefore while 
the Aristocracy was in the process of formation, England was conquered 
by the Duke of Normandy, who naturally introduced the policy exist- 
ing in his own country. But in his hands it underwent a modification 
suitable to the new circumstances in which he was placed. He, being 
in a foreign country, the general of a successful army, composed partly 
of mercenaries, was able to dispense with some of those feudal usages 
which were customary in France. The great Norman lords, thrown as 
strangers into the midst of a hostile population, were glad to accept 
estates from the crown on almost any terms that would guarantee their 
own security. Of this William naturally availed himself. For, by 
granting baronies on conditions favourable to the crown, he prevented 
the barons from possessing that power which they exercised in France, 
and which, but for this, they would have exercised in England. There- 
suit was that the most powerful of our nobles became amenable to the 
law, or, at all events, to the authority of the king. Indeed, to such an 
extent was this carried, that William, shortly before his death, obliged 
all the landowners to render their fealty to him ; thus entirely neglecting 
that peculiarity of feudalism, according to which each vassal was sepa- 
rately dependent on his own lord. 

But in France the course of affairs was very different. In that 
country the great nobles held their lands not so much by grant as by 
prescription. A character of antiquity was thus thrown over their 
rights; which, when added to the weakness of the crown, enabled 
them to exercise on their own estates all the functions of independent 
Sovereigns. Even when they received their first great check, under 
Philip Augustus, they, in his reign, and indeed, long after, wielded 



1 04 THE ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 

a power quite unknown in England. Thus, to give only two in- 
stances : the right of coining money, which has always been regarded 
as an attribute of sovereignty, was never allowed in England, even to 
the greatest nobles. But in France it was exercised by many persons, 
independently of the crown, and was not abrogated until the sixteenth 
century. A similar remark holds good of what was called the right of 
private war ; by virtue of which the nobles were allowed to attack each 
other, and disturb the peace of the country with the prosecution of their 
private feuds. In England, the aristocracy was never strong enough to 
have this admitted as a right, though they too often exercised it as a 
practice. But in France it became a part of the established law ; it was 
incorporated into the text-books of feudalism, and it was distinctly re- 
cognised by Louis IX. and Philip the Fair, two kings of considerable 
energy, who did everything in their power to curtail the enormous 
authority of the nobles. 

Out of this difference between the aristocratic power of France and 
England, there followed many consequences of great importance. In 
our country, the nobles being too feeble to contend with the crown, 
were compelled, in self-defence, to ally themselves with the people ; 
an important consequence, which Sir Francis Palgrave omits to notice, 
in attempting to estimate the results produced by the Norman conquest. 
About a hundred years after this great event, the Normans and Saxons 
amalgamated, and both^parties united against the king, in order to up- 
hold their common rights * The Magna Charta, which John was 
forced to yield, contained concessions to the aristocracy ; but its most 
important stipulations were those in favour of " all classes of freemen."f 
Within half a century fresh contests broke out ; the barons were again 
associated with the people, and again there followed the same results, — 
the extension of popular privileges being each time the condition and 
the consequence of this singular alliance. 

The English aristocracy being thus forced, by their own weakness, to 
rely on the people, it naturally followed that the people imbibed that tone 
of independence, and that lofty bearing, of which our civil and political 
institutions are the consequence, rather than the cause. It is to this, and 
not to any fanciful superiority of race, that we owe the sturdy and en- 
terprising spirit for which the inhabitants of this island have long been 
remarkable. It is this which has enabled us to baffle all the arts of 



* Of this amalgamation of races we have three distinct kinds of evidence : 1. 
Towards the end of the twelfth century, a new language began to be formed by 
blending Norman with Saxon ; and English literature, properly so called, dates 
from the commencement of the thirteenth century, 2. We have the specific 
statement of this admixture of races by a writer in the reign of Henry II. 
3. Before the thirteenth century had passed away, the difference of dress, which, 
in that state of society would survive many other differences, was no longer 
observed, and the distinctive peculiarities of Norman and Saxon attire had 
disappeared. 

t " An equal distribution of civil rights to all classes of freemen forms the 
peculiar beauty of the charter. " (Halla?ris Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 108.) This is 
very finely noticed in one of Lord Chatham's great speeches. — Parliamentary 
Hist. vol. xvi. p. 662. 



ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 105 

oppression, and to maintain for centuries liberties which no other nation 
ever possessed. And it is this which has fostered and upheld those 
great municipal privileges, which, whatever be their faults, have at least 
the invaluable merit of accustoming freemen to the exercise of power, 
giving to citizens the management of their own city, and perpetuating 
the idea of independence by preserving it in a living type, and by 
enlisting in its support the interest and affections of individual men. — 
Abridged from Buckle's Hist. Civilization, vol. i. pp. 563 — 567. 



WHAT IS ARISTOCRACY ? 

Professor Kingsley contrasts strongly Aristocracy with Caste, and tak- 
ing an enlarged view of aristocracy, he attributes its creation and main- 
tenance to the possession of superior merit rather than to superior 
wealth. It would be an evil day for this country were the aristocracy 
destroyed ; and in his beau ideal of such an institution it should include 
every one who is by his deeds noble and meritorious, and should extirpate 
from its ranks all who are base and ignoble ; though he fears it would 
be many years before that opinion is generally accepted and acted on. 
He repudiates the notion of equality, as being contrary to experience and 
common sense, and at some length shows how, even on the assumption 
of the unity of the human race — which he is not inclined to dispute — 
differences would arise which would place some men and some classes 
of men above others. Thus, for example, the invention of the bow and 
arrow would give immense advantage to those who first possessed it ; 
and he considers the invention of riding on horseback to have been of 
equal importance in its time to the invention of locomotion on railways 
in modern days. The consequences resulting from it he points out in 
many ways, showing how the people who rode on horseback had con- 
quered and ruled over nations numerically much more powerful. The 
invention of breaking-in horses to draw, and the construction of carts 
with wheels, are also noticed as giving governing power to those who 
first contrived those appliances ; and in this manner the growth of aris- 
tocracies is traced to its elementary principles. 



ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 

When Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, raised a rebellion 
against Henry III., he found his own party too weak to make head against 
the Crown. He therefore applied to the people ; and it is to him that our 
House of Commons owes its origin ; since he, in 1264, set the first ex- 
ample of issuing writs to cities and boroughs ; thus calling upon citizens 
and burgesses to take their places in what had hitherto been a Parliament 
composed entirely of priests and nobles. Some writers suppose that 
burgesses were summoned before the reign of Henry III., but this as- 
sertion is not only unsupported by evidence, but is in itself improbable ; 



to(5 WHO WAS ROBIN HOOD? 

because, at an earlier period, the citizens, though rapidly increasing in 
power, were hardly important enough to warrant such a step being taken. 
The best authorities are now agreed to refer the origin of the House of 
Commons to the above period. The notion of tracing this to the Wit- 
tenagemot is as absurd as finding the origin of Juries in the system of Com- 
purgators, both of which were favourite errors in the 1 7th and even in 
the 1 8th century. In regard to the Wittenagemot, this idea still lingers 
among antiquaries ; but in regard to the Compurgators, even they have 
abandoned the old ground ; and it is now well understood that even 
Trial by Jury did not exist till long after the Conquest. There are few 
things in our history so irrational as the admiration expressed by a cer- 
tain class of writers for the institutions of our barbarous Anglo-Saxon 
ancestors. — Buckle's Hist. Civilization, vol. i. pp. 566-7, note. 



WHO WAS ROBIN HOOD ? 

Great and long has been the discussion about Robin Hood, — whether 
he was a myth or a real personage. There exists in the handwriting of 
Dr. Stukeley, the antiquary, a very long pedigree of Robin Hood, in 
which his descent is traced from Raff Raby, Earl of Northumberland, to 
Waltheof, the great earl of that name, who married Judith, Countess 
of Huntingdon, the Conqueror s niece, from whom the pedigree states 
Robert Fitzooth, commonly called Robin Hood, the pretended Earl of 
Huntingdon, was descended, and that he died in 1274. This pedigree 
is far more elaborate in its genealogical tracings than that inserted by 
Mr. Ritson in his edition of the Robin Hood Ballads, 1795, vo ^ ** 
p. xxi. Latimer, in his sixth sermon before Edward VI., tells a story 
about wishing to preach at a country church, when he found the door 
locked, and the people gone abroad to gather for Robin Hood. He 
then adds : " Under the pretence of gathering for Robin Hood, a traitor 
and a thief ] to put out a preacher." This may corroborate Mr. Hunter's 
view of the renowned personage, to be noticed presently. 

Ireland, too, is associated with the fame of this renowned wood- 
ranger. "In the year 1189," writes Holinshed, "there ranged three 
robbers and outlaws in England, among which 'Robert' Hood and 
Little John were chieftains, of all thieves doubtless the most courteous. 
Robert, being betrayed at a nunnery in Scotland called Bricklies, the 
remnant of the 'crue' was scattered, and every man forced to shift for 
himself; whereupon Little John was fain to flee the realm by sailing 
into Ireland, where he sojourned for a few days at Dublin. The 
citizens being ' doone' to understand the wandering outcast to be an 
excellent archer, requested him heartily to try how far he could shoot 
at random, who, yielding to their behest, stood on the bridge of Dublin, 
and shot to a hillock in Oxmantown, thereafter called Little John's 
shot, leaving behind him a monument, rather by posterity to be won- 
dered than possibly by any man living to be counterscored." — {Descrip- 
tion of Ireland, fol., p. 24.) The danger, however, of being taken, drove 



WHO WAS ROBIN HOOD? 107 



Little John thence to Scotland, where, adds the annalist, " he died at a 
town or village called Moravia." 

In the Vision of Piers Ploughman are two remarkable passages, in 
which mention is made of " Robberd the Robber," and of " Roberdes 
knaves." In a note Mr. Wright quotes a statute of Edward III., in 
which certain malefactors are classed together, one of which is Roberdes- 
men, and he adds two curious instances, in which the name is 
applied in a similar manner— one from a Latin song of the reign of 
Henry III. It seems not impossible that we have in these passages a 
trace of some forgotten mythical personage. " Whitaker," says Mr. 
Wright, "supposes, without any reason, the 'Roberde's knaves' to be 
Robin Hood's men. It is singular enough, however, that as early as 
the time of Henry III., we find the term ' comaro Roberto' applied 
generally, as designating any common thief or robber ; and without 
asserting that there is any direct allusion to "Robin Hood's men" in. 
the expression " Roberdes knaves," one is tempted to ask whence the 
hero of Sherwood got his own name ? Grimm has suggested that Robin 
Hood may be connected with an equally famous namesake, Robin 
Goodfellow ; and that he may have been so called from the hood or 
hoodikin, which is a well-known characteristic of the mischievous doer. 
We believe, however, it is now generally admitted that " Robin Hood" 
is a corruption of " Robin o' th' Wood," equivalent to ' silvaticus' or 
' wild man,' a term which, as we learn from Ordericus, was generally 
given to those Saxons who fled to the woods and morasses, and long 
held them against their Norman enemies. Whether Robin Goodfellow 
and his German brother, " Knecht Ruprecht," are at all connected with 
Robin Hood, seems very doubtful. The plants which, both in England 
and in Germany, are thus named, appear to belong to the elf rather 
than the outlaw. The wild geranium, called 'Herb Robert' in 
Gerarde's time, is known in Germany as " Ruprecht's Kraut ;" " Poor 
Robin," " Ragged Robin," and " Robin in the House," probably all 
commemorate" the same "merry wanderer of the night." — R. J. King, 
Notes and Oueries, No. 51. 

The ballads in honour of the Bold Robin were, for centuries, popular 
over our isle, the most valuable belonging to Nottinghamshire, Lanca- 
shire, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire. They are full of incident and of 
human character ; they reflect the manner and feelings of remote times ; 
they delineate much that the painter has not touched, and the historian 
forgotten ; they express, but without acrimony, a sense of public injury 
or of private wrong ; nay, they sometimes venture into the regions of 
fancy, and give pictures in the spirit of romance. He, Robin, was no 
lover of blood : nay, he delighted in sparing those who sought his life 
when they fell into his power ; and he was beyond all example, even of 
knighthood, tender and thoughtful about women. Next to the 
ladies he loved the yeomanry of England ; he molested no herd at 
the plough, no thresher in the barn, no shepherd with his flocks ; he was 
the friend and protector of the husbandman and hind, and woe to the 
priest who fleeced, or the noble who oppressed them. The widow, too, 
and the fatherless-, he looked upon as under his care, and wheresoever he 






108 WHO WAS ROBIN HOOD? 

went some old woman was ready to do him a kindness for a saved son 
or a rescued husband. The personal character of Robin Hood stands 
high in the pages both of history and poetry. Fordun, a priest, extols 
his piety; Maij or pronounced him the most humane of robbers; and 
Camden, a more judicious authority, calls him "the gentlest of thieves." 
Festivals were once annually held, and sylvan games celebrated in his 
honour in Scotland as well as in England. The grave where he lies has 
still its pilgrims ; the well out of which he drank still retains his name ; 
and his bow, and some of his broad arrows, were, within this century, to 
be seen in Fountains Abbey, a place memorable by his adventure with 
the curtal friar. The choice of his grave is thus told in the ballad : — 

*' Give me my bent bow in my hand, 
And a broad arrow I'll let flee ; 
And where this arrow is taken up, 
There shall my grave digg'd be. 

" Lay me a green sod under my head, 

And another at my feet, 
And lay my bent bow by my side, 

Which was my music sweet, 
And make my grave of gravel and green, 

Which is most right and meet. 

" Let me have length and breadth enough, 
With a green sod under my head, 
That they may say, when I am dead, 
Here lies bold Robin Hood." 

These words they readily promised him, 

Which did bold Robin please, 
And there they buried bold Robin Hood, 

Near to the fair Kirkleys. 



Little John, it is said, survived but to see his master buried : his grave 
is claimed by Scotland as well as England, but tradition inclines to the 
grave in the churchyard of Hathersage. 

The fictitious pedigree, and numerous other fanciful conjectures, con- 
cerning the origin and family of Robin Hood, are now swept away by 
the Rev. Joseph Hunter's discovery of documents in our national 
archives, by which he proves Robin Hood to have been a yeoman in the 
time of Edward II.; that he fell into the king's power, when he was 
freeing his forest from the marauders of that day ; that the king, pur- 
suing a more lenient policy towards his refractory subjects, took Robin 
Hood into his service, made him one of his Vaellets, porteurs de la cham- 
hre, in his household ; and Mr. Hunter has discovered the exact amount of 
wages that was paid him, and other circumstances, establishing the 
veritable existence of this hero of our childhood. 

A Correspondent of Notes and Queries, No. 16$, thus briefly sums up 
what, he shows, there are good grounds for inferring : 

" i. The name of Robin Hood was no patronymic, but a purely descrip- 
tive name. 2. It was the name of the ideal personification of a class — 
the outlaws of former times. 3. Robin's fame had extended through- 



THE BATTLE OF SPURS, 109 

out England, Scotland, and France ; and so far as can at present be seen, 
it seems to have pertained equally to these three countries. 4. Though 
men of the name of Robin Hood have existed in England, that of itself 
would afford no ground for inferring that one of them was the Robin 
Hood of romantic tradition ; but any pretence for such a supposition is 
taken away by the strong evidence, both Scotch and French, now adduced 
in support of the opposite view." 

Robin Hood appears to have become the general name for a chieftain of 
archers; for in Stow's account of King Henry VIII. going to Shooter's 
Hill-wood to fetch may, in the year 151 1, when " the King, with Queen 
Catherine his wife, accompanied by many lords and ladies, rode a-may- 
ing from Greenwich to the high ground of Shooter's Hill, where, as 
they passed by the way, they espyed a company of tall yeomen, clothed all 
in greene, with greene hoods and with bowes and arrowes, to the number 
of 200. One being the chieftain, was called Robin Hood, who required 
the King and all his company to stay and see his men shoot ; whereunto 
the King granting, Robin Hood whistled, and all the 200 archers shot 
off, loosing all at once; and when he whistled againe, they likewise 
shot againe ; their arrowes whistled by craft of the head, so that the noise 
was strange and loud, which greatly delighted the King and Queen, and 
their company." Afterwards, Robin Hood invited them to enter the 
wood, where, " in arbours made with boughs and deck't with flowers, 
they were set and served plentifully with venison and wine." 

Shooter's Hill, named from its having been a place for the practice of 
archery from a very early period, became noted for the numerous rob- 
beries committed upon it. In the sixth year of Richard an order was 
issued by the Crown to " cut down the woods on each side the road 
at Shetor's Held, leading from London to Rochester, which was become 
very dangerous to travellers, in compliance with the statute of Edward 
I. for widening roads where there were woods which afforded shelter 
for thieves." In the reign of Henry VIII. there was a beacon on the 
summit of the Hill, as appears from several entries in the churchwarden's 
accounts of Eltham, of sums paid " for watching the beacon on Shuter's 
Hill." The modern triangular Tower built here is 445 feet above the 
level of the sea. 



THE BATTLE OF SPURS. 

This was the name given to the battle of Courtray, July 11, 1302, 
the first great engagement between the nobles and the burghers, which, 
with the subsequent battles of Bannockburn, Crecy, and Poitiers, 
decided the fate of feudalism. In this encounter the knights and gentle- 
men of France were entirely overthrown by the citizens of a Flemish 
manufacturing town. The French nobility rushed forward with loose 
bridles, and fell headlong, one after another, into an enormous ditch, 
which lay between them and their enemies. The whole army was anni- 
hilated, and when the spoils were gathered, there were found 4000 
golden spurs to mark the extent of the knightly slaughter, and give a 
name to the engagement : — 



no THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY. 

" I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold, 
Marching homeward from the bloody Battle of the Spurs of Gold." 

Longfellow. 

The name of the Battle of Spurs was also given to an affair at Guine- 
gate, near Calais, August 18, 15 13, in which the English troops under 
Henry VIII. defeated the French forces. The allusion is said to be to 
the unusual energy of the beaten party in riding off the field. — Wheeler's 
Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction. 

A highly intelligent young prisoner, Louis d'Orleans, the Duke of 
Longueville, &c, was taken at the Battle of Spurs, and sent over to the 
safe keeping of Queen Catherine, who did not care for the custody of 
a lively French nobleman, and so recommended that he should be dis- 
posed of in the Tower. Nevertheless, he contrived to make himself 
agreeable, if not to Queen Catherine, certainly to the king and to 
Wolsey, and he was not slow in turning these advantages to the interest 
of Louis, and in bringing him to a more promising understanding with 
Henry. It was reported that Anne of Brittany had died January 9, 
1514, and though the report was probably premature, it is certain that 
some correspondence had been going on between his master and Henry 
by the means of this adroit Duke of Longueville ; and with what object ? 
Whether for the marriage of Louis with Mary, Tudor princess, and 
the most beautiful woman of her time, cannot at present be ascertained ; 
but the result was, at all events, that Prince Charles, a sickly, melan- 
choly boy of 14, was set aside as a worse alternative than a valetudi- 
narian of 52, and Mary was publicly betrothed to Louis ; so that the 
whole course of her wooing, her love letters, the number of her dresses, 
her attendants, her reception at Paris, her coronation, and life at the 
French Court, maybe read in the documents appended to Mr. Brewer's 
Catalogue of the Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII. 



THE BATTLE OF THE THIRTY. 

' This celebrated engagement took place at a spot known as Midway 
Oak, halfway between the castles of Josselin and Ploermel, in France, 
March 27, 1351. The French General Beaumanoir, commanding the 
former post, being enraged by depredations committed by Bemborough, 
the English general occupying the latter position, challenged him to 
fight. Upon this, it was agreed that thirty knights of each party should 
meet and decide the contest. The two chiefs presented themselves at 
the head of their best soldiers, and the battle began in earnest. At the 
first onset the English were successful ; but Bemborough having been 
killed, the French renewed the struggle with redoubled courage, and 
won the victory. " This," says Wheeler, " was one of the most heroic 
exploits of the age, and gained such popularity that, more than a hundred 
years later, when speaking of a hard contest, it was usually said, " There 
was never such hard fighting since ' the Battle of the Thirty.' " 



THE FIRST PRINCE OF WALES. i e t 



WHERE WAS THE FIRST PRINCE OF WALES BORN ? 

The title of Princes of Wales originally distinguished the native 
Princes of that country ; and after the entire conquest of Wales and 
its union with England, the title was transferred to the heir-apparent of the 
English crown. Henry III., in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, gave 
to his son Edward (afterwards Edward I.) the principality of Wales 
and earldom of Chester, but rather as an office of trust and government 
than an especial title for the heir-apparent to his crown. When Edward 
afterwards became King, he conquered, in T277, Llewelyn and David, 
the last native Princes of Wales, and united the kingdom of Wales with 
the crown of England. There is a tradition that Edward, to satisfy 
the national feelings of the Welsh people, promised to give them a 
prince without blemish on his honour, a Welshman by birth, and one 
who could not speak a word of English. In order to fulfil his promise 
literally, he sent the Queen Eleanor to be confined at Caernarvon Castle ; 
and he invested with the principality her son, Edward of Caernarvon, 
then an infant, and caused the barons and great men to do him homage. 
Edward was not at the time the King's eldest son, but on the death 
of his brother, Alfonso, he became heir-apparent, and from that time the 
Prince of Wales has ever been the title of the eldest son of the King. 
The title, however, is not inherited, but conferred by special creation 
and investiture, and was not always given shortly after the birth of the 
heir-apparent. Edward's creation of Prince of Wales dates from the 
year 1301, when he was seventeen years old; his son was ten years old 
when he was created Prince of Wales. 

It is not easy to understand what honour can attach to any spot 
from its being the birth-place of Edward the Second, one of the few 
kings of England who were deposed by Parliament for their crimes. 
But Caernarvon rejoices in the honour of being the birthplace of the 
first Prince of Wales. It is, however, difficult to understand why the 
inhabitants of the counties and towns of North Wales should rejoice to 
speak of the son of the conqueror as " the first Prince of Wales," as if 
they had wholly forgotten their last Llwyelyn, as if there had never been 
such a prince as GrufFydd, the head and shield and defender of Britons ; 
the warrior whom it needed all the might of Harold himself to overthrow. 
Still, Caernarvon claims its Castle as the birthplace of the Prince, 
though this is a strange perversion of the facts of history. When, in 
April, 1868, the Prince of Wales visited Caernarvon, he was welcomed 
in the Castle " on this the anniversary of the birth within these walls 
of the first Prince of Wales," and reference was made to " the period 
in which the first Prince of Wales was presented to a reluctant popu- 
lation from the gates of this majestic and venerable building." Lastly, 
" the Prince and Princess of Wales were conducted to the Eagle Tower, 
the chamber in which, according to tradition, the first Prince of Wales 
was born. " In all these words and deeds there is a flagrant falsification of 
history. Nothing is more certain than that Edward the Second was not 
born in the present Caernarvon Castle, least of all in the Eagle Tower 
which he himself built. And the truth of the matter is per- 



IT2 EDWARD II. AND BERKELEY CASTLE, 

fectly well known, and perfectly well known on the spot. The late 
Mr. Hartshorne twice, in 1848 and in 1857, lectured to large audi- 
ences in the Castle, and explained its history. Mr. Hartshorne's dis- 
coveries are not only familiar to all antiquaries, but they are quite 
familiar at Caernarvon. 

Edward the Second was undoubtedly born at Caernarvon on St. 
Mark's Day, 1284; but he was not born in the present castle, which 
did not then exist. The only passage of any ancient writer which could 
have given ground for such a belief is the expression of Nicholas Trivet : — 
"Apud castrum de Karnarvan quod nuper Rex Anglias fortissimum 
fecerat, natus est Regi filius, ex nomine patris vocatus Edwardus." But 
" castrum " may just as well mean the town as the castle, and anyhow 
N. Trivet is wrong in his fact, as the first beginning of fortifications at 
Caernarvon at all was made in November 1284, seven months after 
Edward's birth. There is no guess-work in the matter. Mr. Harts- 
horne made out the date of everything from the Public Records. The 
first Castle of Caernarvon was begun in November 1284, and was finished 
in 1 29 1. The town walls were built in 1296. Edward the Second was 
therefore not born either in a castle or in a fortified town. And the 
castle which began to be built a few months after his death is not the 
castle which is now standing. The first castle was destroyed in Madoc's 
revolt in 1295. Edward the First then began again, but the work was 
not finished at the time of his death. The work was continued by 
Edward the Second. The Eagle Tower, in which tradition says that 
he was born, was built by Edward the Second himself, and was finished 
in 1317. The gateway of the majestic and venerable building, at which 
he was presented to a reluctant population, was also built by himself, 
and was finished in 1320, when he had attained the mature age of thirty- 
six years. All these are facts, resting on documentary evidence, facts 
perfectly well known to every decently-informed person." — Saturday 
Review, May 2, 1868. 

Nor are these all the strange stories of the Castle. It has been 
affirmed on authority, that the Castle was built in one year; and that 
the Eagle Tower was named from a now shapeless figure of an eagle, 
brought, it is alleged, from the ruins of Segontium ; but an eagle was 
one of Edward's crests. The whole edifice was repaired about twenty 
years ago, at a cost of upwards of 3000/. The late Marquis of Angle- 
sey was long governor of the fortress. Painful as it may be to contem- 
plate the downfall of such a tradition, historic truth is of greater conse- 
quence to establish. The " first Prince of Wales" was certainly born 
in the town of Caernarvon, and most probably in some building tempo- 
rarily erected for the accommodation of the royal household. 



EDWARD II. AND BERKELEY CASTLE. 

When Horace Walpole, in 1774, visited Matson, near Gloucester, 
the very mansion where King Charles I. and his two eldest sons lay 
during the siege ; and there are marks of the lad's hacking with his 



WERE CANNON USED AT CRECY? n 3 

hanger on a window, — he went to Gloucester Cathedral, and on seeing 
the monument of Edward II. a new historic doubt started, which, writes 
Walpole to Cole, " I pray you to solve. His Majesty has a longish 
beard ; and such were certainly worn at that time. Who is the first 
historian that tells the story of his being shaven with cold water from a 
ditch, and weeping to supply warm, as he was carried to Berkeley Castle? 
Is not this apocryphal ?" [The incident is narrated by Rapin.] 

In the neighbourhood Walpole found in a wretched cottage a child 
in an ancient oaken cradle, exactly in the form of that lately published 
from the cradle of Edward II. Walpole purchased it for five shillings, 
but doubted whether he should have fortitude enough to transport it to 
Strawberry Hill. He was much disappointed with Berkeley Castle, 
though very entire : he notes : " the room shown for the murder of 
Edward II., and the shrieks of an agonising king, I verily believe to be 
genuine. It is a dismal chamber, almost at the top of the house, quite 
detached, and to be approached only by a kind of footbridge, and from 
that descends a large flight of steps, that terminate on strong gates ; ex- 
actly a situation for a corps de garde. In that room they show you a 
cast of a face, in plaster, and tell you it was taken from Edward's. I 
was not quite so easy of faith about that ; for it is evidently the face of 
Charles I." 



WERE CANNON USED AT CRECY? 

This is a quxstio vexata of long standing. We find it said that in 
King Edward's army there were a few of those novel engines, and that 
the good service which they did, conduced most to his victory. On the 
other hand, many modern writers leave out all mention of them, not 
deeming the evidence of the fact strong enough. Not only our old 
Latin chroniclers, but our English historians also, Holinshed and Speed, 
are wholly silent upon this subject. Such a statement seems to rest 
on the one-sided authority of French writers — on Mezerai, Larrey, and 
others ; making it a sort of palliation of this extraordinary defeat of 
their countrymen. The former says, " then these hitherto unknown and 
formidable engines induced them to believe that they were combating 
with devils rather than men." — Notes and Queries, No. 264. 

The Italian writer, Villani, who died in T348, states that the English 
used "bombards, which shot out balls of iron with fire, to terrify and 
destroy the horses of the French," and of their discharges being accom- 
panied with " so great a shaking and noise that it seemed as if the 
Deity were thundering, and with a great slaying of men and horses." 
Mr. Sharon Turner states that Froissart says nothing about the use of 
cannon at this battle ; but in a manuscript of Froissart, preserved in the 
Library of Amiens, it is distinctly stated that cannon were used by the 
English at Crecy. The passage referred to is quoted by the Emperor 
Napoleon j I., in his work on Artillery, and runs thus, translated: " And 
the English caused to fire suddenly certain guns which they had in the 
battle, to astonish (or confound) the Genoese." — Notes and Queries, 
No. 270 



ij 4 THE ORDER OF THE GARTER. 

Now Villani is the older writer of the two, for he was nearly fifty 
years of age when the battle of Crecy w r as fought, whereas Froissart was 
but a child of nine. The means of information which Froissart possessed 
were probably superior to those of Villani ; yet, when Villani died, only 
two years after the battle, the intelligence upon which he built his 
notice of it must have been fresh. 

There is a story of cannon-balls being found in the field of Crecy ;' 
but this is not authenticated. Some have even gone so far as to present 
us with actual drawings of the very guns used on that occasion. Major 
Mitchell distinctly states that artillery was not used at Crecy, and the 
only foundation for the mis-statement is a passage in the Grandes Chro- 
niques de France, which is the only book on the battle in which the 
faintest allusion is made to cannon. There it is stated, indeed, that the 
English "jetterent trois canons ;" and this has been taken to mean that 
they had artillery. The preceding sentence, however, explains the mean- 
ing of the statement in a very different manner. We read that " the 
English threw so many arrows that they looked like flakes of drifting 
snow — ils en jetterent trois canons ; they threw three quivers full of 
them, the word canon being generally used at the period for tube or 
quiver." 

In some public accounts of the reign of Edward III., wherein are 
specified the names of the persons employed in the manufacture of gun- 
powder (out of saltpetre and " quick sulphur," without any mention 
of charcoal), with the quantities supplied to King Edward, just pre- 
viously to his expedition to France, in June or July, 1346, the records 
show that a considerable weight had been supplied to the English army 
subsequently to its landing at La Hogue, and previously to the battle of 
Crecy; and that before Edward III. engaged in the siege of Calais, he 
issued an order to the proper officers in England, requiring them to 
purchase as much saltpetre and sulphur as they could procure. 



THE ORDER OF THE GARTER. 

It is contended by the best modern authorities that the celebrated 
Order of the Garter was instituted in 1348, by the chivalrous Edward 
III. Some years before this date he had gone some way in forming an 
Order of the Round Table, in commemoration of the legend of King 
Arthur; and in January, 1344, had caused an actual Round Table of 
two hundred feet diameter to be constructed in Windsor Castle, where 
the knights were entertained at his expense. Before the above date a 
turn had been given to the views of the King, leading him to adopt a 
totally different idea for the basis of the Order. " The popular idea is, 
that during a festival at Court, a lady happened to drop her garter, which 
was taken up by King Edward, who, observing a significant smile among 
the bystanders, exclaimed with some displeasure, ' Honi soit qui mal y 
pense !' — Shame to him who thinks ill of it! In the spirit of gallantry 
which belonged no less to the age than his own disposition, conformably 
with the action of wearing a lady's favour, and perhaps to prevent any 



EUSTACHE DE ST. PIERRE. 



further impertinence, the King is said to have placed the garter round 
his own knee/' — Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor. 

It is commonly said that the fair owner of the Garter was the Countess 
of Salisbury ; but this is doubtful, and some consider the whole story 
fabulous. It is to be remarked that the tale is far from being modern. 
It is stated by Polydore Vergil as early as the reign of Henry VII. 

Although the Order is believed to have been not founded before June 
24, 1348, it is certain that the Garter itself was become an object of 
some note at Court in the autumn of the preceding year, when at a 
great tournament, held in honour of the King's return from France, 
" Garters with the motto of the Order embroidered thereon, and robes 
and other habiliments, as well as banners and couches, ornamented with 
the same ensign, were issued from the great wardrobe at the charge of 
the Sovereign."— (Beltz's Memorials of the Order of the Garter, 1841.) 
The royal mind was evidently by this time deeply interested in the 
Garter. A surcoat furnished in 1348 for a spear-play or hastilude at 
Canterbury, was covered with Garters. At the same time the youthful 
Prince of Wales presented twenty-four garters to the Knights of the 
Society. 



EUSTACHE DE ST. PIERRE AND THE BURGESSES 
OF CALAIS. 

With the siege of Calais, and its surrender to Edward III. in 1347, 
is associated the name of Eustache de Saint Pierre, whose loyalty and 
disinterestedness have been immortalized by the historian, and comme- 
morated by the artist's pencil. The subject of Queen Philippa's inter- 
cession on behalf of Eustache and his brave companions, is familiar : the 
stern demeanour of the king ; the tears and supplicating attitude of the 
Queen Philippa ; and the humiliating position of the burgesses of Calais, 
&c. But what if Eustache de St. Pierre had been bought over by King 
Edward ? For, without going the length of pronouncing the scene of 
the worthy citizens, with halters round their necks, to have been a " got 
up " affair, there is, however, some reason to doubt whether the boasted 
loyalty of Eustache de St. Pierre was such as was represented. In one 
of the volumes of the Documens inedits sur I'Histoire de France is a state- 
ment founded on a memoir by M. de Berquigny, that Eustache de St. 
Pierre became a pensioner of King Edward, after the taking of Calais, 
on condition of his maintaining good order, and of his preserving it to 
England. Even in Froissart there is nothing to prove that Edward 
designed to put these men (the citizens) to death. On the contrary, he 
takes notice that the king's refusal of mercy was accompanied with a 
wink to his attendants, which, if it meant anything, must have meant that 
he was not acting seriously. — Lingard, 3rd edit, 1825, vol. iv. note 85. 

Again, in Hume, " the story of the six burgesses of Calais, like all 
extraordinary stories, is somewhat to be suspected ; and so much the 
more, as Avesbury, who is particular in his narrative of the surrender of 
Calais, says nothing of it, and on the contrary, extols in general the 

I 2 



n<5 THE PRINCE OF WALES'S FEATHERS. 

king's generosity and lenity to the inhabitants." — Hume, 8vo, 1807, 
vol. ii. note H. 

Both Hume and Lingard mention that Edward expelled the natives of 
Calais, and repeopled the place with Englishmen ; but they say nothing 
as to Eustache de St. Pierre becoming a pensioner of the king's. 

Miss Strickland likewise gives the story as related by Froissart, but 
mentions the fact of Queen Philippa taking possession of Jean d'Arc's 
property, and the doubt cast upon Eustache's loyalty ; and she would 
appear to justify him by reason of King Philip's abandoning the brave 
Galisians to their fate. However this may be, documents exist proving 
that the inhabitants of Calais were indemnified for their losses; and, 
whether or not the family of Eustache de St. Pierre approved his 
conduct, so much is certain, that, on the death of the latter, the 
property which had been granted to him by King Edward was confis- 
cated, because they would not acknowledge their allegiance to the 
English. — Notes and Queries, No. 166. 



THE PRINCE OF WALES S FEATHERS. 

The origin and history of the badge and mottoes of the Prince of 
W a i es — the ostrich feathers, " Ich Dien," and " Houmout," have 
exercised the ingenuity of antiquaries and genealogists for the last three 
centuries. Old Randall Holmes solved the question by roundly assert- 
ing that the triple plume was the blazon on the war-banner of the Ancient 
Britons ; but the only resemblance traceable in ancient British heraldry 
is stated to be three lions' tails, their tips falling like the graceful bend 
of the feathers in the Prince's badge. 

The earliest known appearance of feathers, worn in this fashion, is on 
a seal appended to a grant of Prince Edward to his brother, John of 
Gaunt, dated 1370, twenty -four years after the battle of Cressy, where 
Edward is seen seated on a throne, a Sovereign Prince of Aquitaine, 
with a single feather and a blank scroll on each side of him ; and the 
same badge occurs again upon the seal to another grant, in 1374. The 
popular tradition ascribes the assumption of the three feathers to Edward 
the Black Prince, who took this crest, arms, or badge from John, King 
of Bohemia, slain at the battle of Cressy; but, until recently, this 
tradition was not traceable to any credible authority. It is first 
mentioned by Camden (Clarencieux), who, in his Remains, says : — 
"The victorious Black Prince, his (Edward III.'s) sonne, used some- 
times one feather, sometimes three, in token, as some say, of his speedy 
execution in all his services ; as the Posts, in the Roman times, were 
Pterophori, and wore feathers to signify their flying post-haste." In the 
first edition of the " Remains " Camden states, the tradition is that the 
Prince won them (the feathers) at the battle of Poictiers ; but, in the 
second edition, Camden states, " the truth is, that he wonne them at the 
battle of Cressy, from John, King of Bohemia, whom he there slew!" 
The change from the tradition to the truth would be important, did 
Camden add his authority, which he fails to do ; and neither Froissart, 



THE PRINCE OF WALES'S FEATHERS. 117 

Walsingham, Knighton, nor any contemporary historian, alludes to so 
interesting an incident. Barnes, in his " Life of Edward III.," quotes 
Sandford's "Genealogical History;" Sandford quotes Camden, and 
Camden quotes nobody ; but admits that even in his time it was a 
disputed point. 

Mr. Planche, in his History of British Costume, considers there 
to be no reason for Edward's selecting the German motto, " Ich 
Diene," (" I serve,") to express his own service to his father, as sur- 
mised. Again, the crest of John of Bohemia, was the entire wing or 
pinion of an eagle, apparently from its shape (as may be seen on his 
seal, engraved in Olivarius Veredius), and not one or three distinct 
ostrich feathers. Then, it is suggested that the feathers may have been 
plucked from the crest of the King of Bohemia, as a symbol of triumph, 
and granted as an heraldic distinction by King Edward III. to his gallant 
son ; but the feathers are henceforth borne singly by all the descendants 
of Edward III. ; they are clearly those of the ostrich, and not those of 
the eagle, such as we see in the helmet of John, King of Bohemia, and 
the seals in Olivarius Veredius. In that distant age the ostrich feather 
may have been assumed by the Prince as emblematic of his warlike pro- 
pensities, from the reputed powers of the ostrich to digest both iron and 
steel ; so that the badge may have been merely a quaint conceit. The 
motto, " Ich Dien," probably had no connexion with the badge. The 
feathers singly appear, with blank scrolls, upon the seals or tombs of 
nearly all the Princes of the houses of York and Lancaster, down to 
Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VII., upon whose monument 
at Worcester they first appear as a plume in a coronet, as well as singly. 
It may here be stated that a writer in the Quarterly Review attributes the 
feathers to the banner of the King of Bohemia, "and not to the helmet, 
as is generally supposed." 

Sir Harris Nicolas, in the Archaologia, xxxi. 350-384, minutely 
examines all the contemporary and other early evidence on the subject, 
from written statements, seals, and paintings. Sir Harris states that the 
first time the feathers are mentioned in any record is in an indenture (not 
hitherto known) of " the Queen's Plate, date after 1369, which is an 
alms-dish, marked with a sable escutcheon, charged with ostrich feathers, 
believed to have belonged to Queen Philippa, either as a badge of her 
family or as arms borne in right of some territories appertaining to 
her house." On this piece of plate the feathers are found for the first 
time. 

The next and most remarkable notices of the ostrich feathers occur 
m the will of the Black Prince, directing that his body should be buried 
in Canterbury Cathedral, and that in six of the escutcheons on his tomb 
should be placed ostrich feathers, as well as a banner and a pennon with 
ostrich feathers. The Prince also bequeaths to the church of Canter- 
bury his hangings of ostrich feathers of black tapestry ; he desires that 
his chapel should be ornamented " with our badge of ostrich feathers," 
and he mentions " a blue vestment with gold roses and ostrich feathers," 
also " arras, embroidered with ostrich feathers," &c. Mr. Willement, 
from the Lansdowne MS., 932, states there were formerly in the church 



1 1 8 THE PRINCE OF WALES'S FEA THERS. 

of St. Katherine, near the Tower, two shields, one charged with six ostrich 
feathers erect, each fixed on a scroll inscribed Ich Dien; and that a shield, 
similarly charged, once stood in a window of St. Olave's Church, in 
the Old Jewry. 

Although the Prince directs in his will "Houmout" as a motto, it 
occurs only over the shields containing his arms, and over the shields 
with ostrich feathers is placed " Ich Dien," as well as in a scroll upon 
the quill of each feather. That the Black Prince did use the motto 
Ich Diene as well as Houmout is placed beyond dispute by evidence 
which Sir H. Nicolas published for the first time. 

In further refutation of the Cressy tradition, Sir H. Nicolas shows 
that the crest of the King of Bohemia was two wings of a 'vulture 
semee of linden-leaves of gold expanded, and not a plume of ostrich 
feathers. An ostrich is said to have been the badge of the Emperor 
Charles IV., King of Bohemia, son of John, King of Bohemia, who 
was slain at Cressy ; and it was undoubtedly the badge of his daughter 
Anne, consort of King Richard II. Queen Philippa's grandmother 
was the sister of Henry, Count of Luxemburg, great-grandfather of 
the Emperor Charles IV. ; and if, as there is reason to suppose, an 
ostrich was the ancient badge of that house, the ostrich feathers borne 
by Queen Philippa and her sons may have been derived from that source. 

Sir H. Nicolas adds, in a note : — " Queen Anne, the first consort of 
Richard II., is represented on her tomb in Westminster Abbey wearing 
a dress richly embroidered with ostriches." An ostrich was also worn 
pendent to the collar of the Queen's livery. Mr. John Gough Nichols's 
hypothesis respecting the ostrich feathers is as follows: — 

That the Bohemian King, who was a relation of Queen Anne no more 
distant than her paternal grandfather, may very proBably have used the 
badge of an ostrich, as well as his son the Emperor Charles, the Queen's 
father ; and that the Prince, upon his victory over this monarch, who, 
from such a badge would be called the ostrich, possibly adopted the con- 
ceit that the feathers of the conquered bird formed an emblematical 
trophy very significant of his success. Such a conjecture may be the 
more acceptable from accommodating itself with the received tradition 
respecting the field of Cressy ; and may therefore be adopted, unless it 
should appear that the feather (which we also find borne by the brothers 
of the Black Prince) was used by our English Princes before that event, 
which, I confess, I think not improbable. 

The only other contemporary evidence of the usage of the feathers in 
the reign of Edward III. is upon seals. The feather is only to be found 
upon one seal of this monarch. Sir H. Nicolas then describes eight of 
the Prince's seals; from which it appears that the feathers were omitted 
on some of the Prince of Wales's seals which were engraved after the 
year 1346 ; whereas no inference in favour of the supposed connexion 
of the badge with the battle of Cressy can be drawn from the omission 
of the feathers on a seal which was certainly engraved before that event, 

It is next shown that the ostrich feathers were borne, with a slight 
difference, by some other, if not by all, of the sons of King Edward III., 
besides the Prince of Wales. And the Prince's widow, Joan, Princes* 



CHEVY-CHASE, OR OTTERBOURNE? 119 

of Wales, by her will in T385, bequeathed to her son, Prince Richard, 
a new bed of red velvet, embroidered ivith ostrich feathers of silver, and 
leopards' heads of gold, with branches and sleeves of silver. Sir H. 
Nicolas proceeds with examples to the ostrich feathers borne by Arthur 
Prince of Wales, son of Henry VII. ; and the feathers and motto, in a 
novel but picturesque form, as they occur on stained glass of the time 
of Henry VIII., in the Porter's Lodge, in the Tower of London. 

The badge seems thenceforth to have been considered to belong ex- 
clusively to the Sovereign's eldest son ; but Prince Edward (afterwards 
King Edward VI., but who was never Prince of Wales) used it in an 
unprecedented manner. In old St. Dunstan's Church, Fleet-street, were 
the arms of Henry VIII., having on the dexter side one of his badges ; 
and on the other a roundel, per pale, sanguine, and azure, within a leaf 
composed of leaves and roses, and charged with the letters E. P. Be- 
tween the letters was a plume of three ostrich feathers argent, penned, or, 
passing through a label inscribed Ich Dien, the feathers being surmounted 
by the Prince's coronet. Another, but somewhat similar example, oc- 
curs on a piece of glass which is supposed to have come from Reynold's 
Place, Horton Kirby, in Kent. 

Henry, Prince of Wales, son of King James I., sometimes bore the 
feathers like his predecessor, Arthur Prince of Wales; and on other 
occasions he placed the feathers on a sun. Since that period the usual 
manner of bearing the feathers is as a plume encircled by a coronet ; and 
from ignorance of the real character of this ancient and beautiful 
badge it has sometimes been considered as the crest of the Princes of 
Wales. 

Sir Harris says of the motto " Houmout," sometimes erroneously 
printed " Houmont," that it is formed of the two old German words, 
' Hoogh, moed,' ' hoo moed,' or ' hoogh-moe' — i.e., magnanimous, high- 
spirited, and was probably adopted to express the predominant quality 
of the Prince's mind. 

In conclusion, Sir H. Nicolas repeats his opinion that there is no truth 
in the tradition which assigns the badge of the ostrich feathers to the 
battle of Cressy, or of Poictiers ; and he is strongly impressed with the 
belief that it was derived, as well as the mottoes, from the house of 
Hainault, possibly from the Comte of Ostrevant, which formed the ap- 
panage of the eldest sons of the Counts of that province. 

A piece of contemporary evidence is, by some, considered to have set 
the question at rest : this is a manuscript of John de Ardern, physician 
in the time of the Black Prince; and who distinctly states that the 
Prince derived the feathers from the blind King of Bohemia. 



CHEVY-CHASE, OR OTTERBOURNE? 

The famous ballad of" Chevy Chase" has lately been proved historically 
worthless. The two versions, the older and the more recent, agree in 
stating the facts as follows: — The combat took place at Otterbourne, 
and was occasioned by the Percy's vow to hunt the Cheviot in spite 



120 CHEVY-CHASE, OR OTTERBOURNE? 

of Douglas. The result was indecisive, T447 out °^ T 5 00 English 
bowmen being killed, and 1495 out of 2000 Scotch spearmen. Douglas 
was shot dead by an arrow ; and Percy slain by a lance-thrust. The 
only battle that ever took place at all near Otterbourne was con- 
tested on the one side by Douglas, with 2000 foot and 300 lances ; 
on the other, by Harry Hotspur and Ralph, sons of the Percy, com- 
manding 8000 foot and 600 spears. It was occasioned by Northum- 
berland sending his sons to encounter the two Scotch armies 
which had entered England. The English attacked the enemy's camp 
between Otterbourne and Newcastle, and were eventually routed with 
the loss of 1800 men, 1000 others being wounded. The invaders lost 
only 100 in killed, 200 in prisoners. Douglas was slain by a spear- 
thrust, while Hotspur was captured. This brief summary of the fight, 
August 19, 1388, is from the very full narrative of Froissart, derived 
from two French knights who had served on the English side in the con- 
test, and from a knight and two squires of Scotland, of the party of 
Earl Douglas. 

It will thus be seen from this bare outline that the ballad consists of 
a pitifully-mangled account of the battle of Otterbourne ; and the min- 
strel, besides openly mentioning this place as the scene, has so blended 
various incidents and names connected with that contest as to destroy 
all doubt on the subject. Nor was there any other occasion on which 
a Douglas was slain. Again, the composer places the event in the reign 
of Henry IV. and " Jamye, the Skottishe Kyng," and makes it imme- 
diately antecedent to Hombledon; but when Richard II. reigned in Eng- 
land the first " Jamye " was not born till ten years after, and Homble- 
don was not fought till 1402. The writer, therefore, must have lived a 
very long period subsequent to Otterbourne, or its chronicler, whose 
last stanza proves him to have composed his poem after 1403. The 
only reason for supposing a separate battle is the hunting party which 
gives name to the ballad ; and this is conjectured to have arisen from 
Otterbourne being styled " The Battle of (the) Chevachecs," that is, 
forays, raids over the border into an enemy's country, in one of which 
the Scots were engaged at this very time. The word occurs in Chaucer, 
during whose life Otterbourne was fought. It still exists in the French 
chcvauchee, and our ch'vvy. 

What could be more natural than that the knightly class should style 
this "the Battle of (the) Chevachees," just as they spoke of the Battle of 
Spurs ; and that the Saxon populace, ignorant of these long aristocratic 
French words, should construe the title into " Battle of (the) Chevy- 
Chase?" 

Hence, then, in the belief of the writer, arose the idea that the battle 
of Otterbourne took place during a hunting expedition in Cheviot. The 
story itself furnishes corroborative testimony. The composer shows his 
ignorance by speaking of Otterbourne as in Cheviot, although at least a 
dozen miles distant. Nay, the very vow of Percy would have been un- 
necessary, or rather a proof of cowardice, for the Cheviots were no less 
Northumbrian than Scotch, Cheviot itself clearly appertaining to Eng- 
land rather than Scotland. This solution of what has long been a source, 






& "° 



EARLS AND DUKES OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 121 

of serious difficulty to students of history and ballad literature, is con- 
densed from an interesting communication to Notes and Queries, 3rd S., 
No. 294, by E. F. Nicholson, Tonbridge. 



THE EARLS AND DUKES OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 

There was formerly in titled life as much peril as grandeur. Take, 
for instance, the eighteen Earls of Northumberland. The first three 
were slain ; the fourth, Cospatrick, from whom the Dundases are de- 
scended, died in exile ; the fifth was beheaded ; the sixth, who was also 
Bishop of Durham (Walcher), was murdered ; the seventh (the Norman 
Alberic) was deprived, and pronounced "unfit for the dignity"; the 
eighth died a prisoner for treason ; the ninth and tenth hardly come into 
the account, for they were Henry and Malcolm, princes of Scotland, 
who were a sort of honorary Earls of Northumberland ; the eleventh 
earl was the old Bishop Pudsey, of Durham, who bought the earldom 
for 11,000/., but was subsequently deprived of it and thrown into prison. 
Then came the Percys. The first earl of that house, but the twelfth in 
succession, after the death of his son, Hotspur, at Shrewsbury, was him- 
self slain in battle ; the thirteenth earl fell at St. Albans, the fourteenth 
at Towton, \the fifteenth at Barnet, the sixteenth was murdered, the 
seventeenth was the first to die a natural death, and the eighteenth left 
no Children. He, indeed, left a brother ; but Sir Thomas Percy was at- 
tainted, and his honours became extinct. The son of Sir Thomas was 
restored in blood and title after Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, was 
beheaded; but the restored earl was himself beheaded in 1572. It was 
his nephew, Earl Henry, the husband of Dorothy, one of the sisters of 
Essex, who suffered fifteen years' imprisonment in the Tower, and was 
mulcted in a fine of 20,000/., not so much because he failed to prove that 
he was not concerned in the Gunpowder Plot, as because the Percy who 
was actively engaged in it was his kinsman and servant. He was the 
last earl of his line who suffered personal constraint ; and in his grandson, 
Josceline Percy, the male line became extinct, in 1670. 

The Earl Josceline's sole child and heiress, Elizabeth, married the 
" proud Duke of Somerset," in which title their son, Algernon Sey- 
mour, succeeded them, with that of Earl of Northumberland added 
thereto. This Algernon Seymour, like Josceline Percy, had but one 
child, Elizabeth, sole heiress now of the Somerset and Northumberland 
property. This Elizabeth once expressed her surprise at a lady having 
refused an offer of marriage made to her by the handsome baronet, Sir 
Hugh Smithson, whose father is described by some writers as a London 
apothecary, but whose family, landed gentry in the north, from the time 
of the Conquest, was as noble as that of the Percys, and only inferior to 
it in the fact that the hereditary title of the one was higher in the scale 
of precedence than that of the other. Sir Hugh married the Percy 
heiress, and was subsequently created Duke of Northumberland in ] 766. 
In the well-nigh hundred years that have since elapsed, there have been 
four dukes, Sir Hugh, his son, and two grandsons. In the later as in 



122 WARS OF THE ROSES. 

the earlier days, these Northumbrian nobles have had to risk their live^ 
in battle; the fourth Duke was in Lord Exmouth's expedition to 
Algiers, and his father distinguished himself in America. The latter, 
too, came into collision with the Government of his day, as his remote 
predecessors had often done ; but in his case with less calamitous issue, 
George the Third had promised him the governorship of Tynemouth ; 
but the King broke his royal word. When he was, subsequently, asked 
to go out to America as " Commissioner," with a promise of the 
Garter on his return, he peremptorily refused ; and when he was asked 
for the grounds of his refusal, he as promptly answered — his experience 
of what Court promises were ! — Abridged from the Athenaum. 



THE POET GOWER, AND THE SUTHERLAND FAMILY. 

In the fine old Church of St. Saviour, Southwark, in the south 
transept, is the Perpendicular monument of the poet Gower, removed 
from the north aisle of the nave in 1832, when it was restored and 
coloured at the expense of the first Duke of Sutherland, a presumed 
collateral descendant from the poet. 

" We are afraid, on the showing of Sir H. Nicolas and Dr. Pauli, 
that the family of the Duke of Sutherland and Lord Ellesmere must re- 
linquish all pretension to being related to, or even descended from John 
Gower. They have hitherto depended solely upon the possession of a 
MS. of the Confess io Amantis, which was supposed to have been pre- 
sented to an ancestor by the poet ; but it now turns out, on the 
authority of Sir Charles Young, Garter, that it was the very copy of the 
work which the author laid at the feet of King Henry IV., while he 
was yet Harry of Hereford, Lancaster, and Derby !" — (Review of Dr. 
Pauli's edition of the Confess io Amantis ; Athenaum, No. 1537, p. 468.) 
Sir Richard Baker is the only Chronicler who gives the date of Gower's 
death correctly, namely, 1408, as in his Will; most if not all other 
writers represent Gower as dying in 1402 or 1403. 



WARS OF THE ROSES. 

Never was such devastation made in the ranks of our nobility, titled 
and untitled, as during the English " Thirty Years' War " of the White 
and the Red Roses. In the thirteen battles fought between York and 
Lancaster, from that of St. Albans, in 1455, to that on Redmore Down, 
near Bosworth, in 1485, — in nine of which battles the Yorkists were 
'victors, yet they ultimately lost the great prize at Bosworth, — there 
perished in fight, by murder, or under the axe, two kings, four princes, 
■ten dukes, two marquises, one-and-twenty earls, two viscounts, and 
seven-and-twenty barons. To these may be added, one lord-prior, one 
judge, one hundred and thirty-nine knights, all noble ; four hundred and 
forty-one esquires, the eldest sons of knights ; and a body of gentlemen, 
or untitled nobility, of coat-armour and ancestry, the number of 



WHO WAS JACK CADE? 123 

whom is variously stated, but which number being incorporated with 
the death-roll cf private soldiers, swelled the great total to nearly eighty- 
six thousand men. Such was the cost to the country of that country's 
best blood, shed in a quarrel which, after all, ended in a wedding by way 
of compromise. — Athenteum. 

+—— 

THE PROUD SOMERSETS. 
The pride of lineage was, perhaps, never more strongly displayed than 
by the Somersets and Seymours, who were of the same stock ; and a 
prouder man was never seen in England than the Duke of Somerset of 
two centuries ago, who had the highways cleared before him, that he 
might not be looked upon by vulgar eyes, and who rebuked his second 
wife for tapping his shoulder with her fan, saying, " Madam, my first 
wife was a Percy, and she never took such a liberty." We may go back 
at once to Cardinal Beaufort, who was of the first generation of the 
family apart from royalty, he being the natural son of John of Gaunt. 
There is a better ground of pride in the family than even antiquity. 
Among the proud Somersets was he who, in early life, commanded a 
little army, raised by his father for the service of Charles I., and who, in 
after years, wrote the Century of Inventions, and first applied the con- 
densation of steam to a practical purpose, though his invention was used 
only for raising water. He was the last noble who held out in his castle 
against Cromwell ; and the stronghold was the Raglan Castle which gave 
his title to the Field-Marshal who, in 1854, commanded the British 
army in the Crimea. 

» 

WPIO WAS JACK CADE ? 

Mr. M. A. Lower, F.S.A., in his ingenious Essays on English 
Surnames, thus corrects an error into which most of our historians have 
fallen, relative to the arch-traitor Jack Cade, temp. Hen. VI. 

They uniformly state that he was an Irishman by birth, but there is 
strong presumptive evidence that to Sussex belongs the unenviable claim 
of his nativity. Speed states that he had been servant to Sir Thomas 
Dagre. Now this Sir Thomas Dagre, or Dacre, was a Sussex knight of 
great eminence, who had seats at Hurstmonceaux and Heathfield, in this 
county. Cade has, for several centuries, been a common name about 
Mayfield and Heathfield, as is proved, as well by numerous entries in 
the parish registers, as by lands and localities designated from the family. 
After the defeat and dispersion of his rabble-rout of retainers, Cade is 
stated to have fled into the woods of Sussex, where, a price being set 
upon his head, he was slain by Sir Alexander Iden, sheriff of Kent. 
Nothing seems more probable than that he should have sought shelter 
from the vindictive fury of his enemies among the woods of his native 
county, with whose secret retreats he was, doubtless, well acquainted, 
and where he would have been likely to meet with friends. The daring 
recklessness of this villain's character is illustrated by the tradition of the 
district that he was engaged in the rustic game of bowls, in the garden 



T24 THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER. 

of a little ale-house at Heathfield, when the well-aimed arrow of the 
Kentish sheriff inflicted the fatal wound. 

Mr. Orridge, in his Account of the Citizens of London and their 
Rulers, states he has reason to believe that Thomas Cooke, draper, 
of the City of London, in 1450, was an ancestor of Alderman Cooke, 
who was in turn an ancestor of Sir Antony Cooke. Now, this Thomas 
Cooke, draper, was the friend and agent of Jack Cade ; and if Mr. 
Orridge's belief should turn out to be right, the friend and agent of Jack 
Cade was not only the ancestor of Bacon and Cecil in Elizabeth's time, 
but, among others, of our present Duke of Beaufort, our present Mar- 
quises of Exeter and Salisbury, our present Lords Fitzwilliam, Burghley, 
and Cranborne. 



HENRY IV. AND THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER. 

Fabyan, the chronicler, relates the death of Henry IV. to have taken 
place in the Jerusalem Chamber, as the fulfilment of a prediction to the 
King that he should die in Jerusalem. Now, Fabyan died in 151 1 or 
15 1 2 : he may be supposed to have been born about 1440 or 1450, and 
to have collected the materials for his history sixty or seventy years 
after King Henry's death. His information, though not recent, was 
doubtless obtained from persons who lived at or near the time. 
Holinshed appears to have repeated the narrative of Fabyan, but to 
have disbelieved the story. As Henry was about to make a pilgrimage 
to Jerusalem at the time when he was attacked by his mortal disease, it 
is likely that a prophecy may have been current that he would die at 
Jerusalem. It may likewise have been true that when his first seizure 
of illness occurred, he was carried to a room called the Jerusalem 
Chamber, and that this coincidence may have been the subject of 
remark. Though Fabyan states that the King died " shortly after " 
his removal to the Jerusalem Chamber, yet his own narrative represent s 
the interval as nearly three months ; that is to say, from " after the feast 
of Christmas " to the 20th of March. The account of Fabyan that the 
King, without any suggestion, asked if the chamber to which he was 
carried had any special name, and that he immediately received the 
answer that it was named Jerusalem, by which the prediction respecting 
him was fulfilled, is in the highest degree improbable. — Eironnach: 
Notes and Queries, 2nd S., No. 89. The incident is, as is well known, 
verified by Shakspeare, in his play of Henry IV., Second Part, 
Act iv. : — 

K. H. Doth any name particular belong 

Unto the lodging where I first did swoon ? 
War. Tis called Jerusalem, my noble lord. 
K. H. Laud be to God ! even there my life must end. 

It hath been prophesied to me many years, 

I should not die but in Jerusalem, 

Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. 

But bear me to that chamber, there I'll he, 

In that Jerusalem shall Harry die. 

In Capgrave's Chronicle of England, edited by the Rev. J. C. 



KING OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 125 

Hingeston, is an account of the death of Henry IV., which may be consi- 
dered as the narrative of a contemporary. Capgrave was born in 1393, 
and died at the age of seventy-one in 1464 : he was twenty years old at 
the death of Henry IV. With the other authorities, he states that the 
King died on March 20th, and he gives the following notice of his 
death : — 

" At his death, as was reported of full sad [i.e., serious, discreet,] 
men, certain lords steered [i.e., incited] his confessor, friar John Till, 
Doctor of Divinity, that he should induce the King to repent him, and 
do penance in special for three things. One for the death on [of] 
King Richard ; the other for the death of Archbishop Scrope ; the 
third for the wrong title of the crown. And his answer was this : 
for the two first points, I wrote unto the Pope the very truth of my 
conscience ; and he sent me a bull, with absolution, and penance 
assigned, which I have fulfilled. And as for the third point, it is hard 
to set remedy ; for my children will not suffer that the regalia go out of 
our lineage." 

This passage implies that the King's death did not take place sud- 
denly, but that it was foreseen ; that certain exhortations of re- 
pentance were addressed to him by his Confessor at the instigation of 
some leading men about the court, and that he gave them a deliberate 
answer. 

It is thought that the name Jerusalem may have been applied to a 
holy place, besides that in Palestine. Dean Vincent has pointed out a 
remarkable coincidence in a passage of Anna Comnena relating to the 
death of Robert Guiscard, king of Sicily, in a place called Jerusalem, at 
Cephalonia. In Lodge's Devils Conjured is a similar story of Pope 
Sylvester. 

— * 

KING OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 

Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, son of Richard Earl of War- 
wick, was crowned King of the Isle of Wight by patent 24 Henry VI., 
King Henry in person assisting at the ceremonial, and placing the crown 
on his head. Leland, in his Itinerary, records Henry Beauchamp 
" coronatus in regem de Wighte" from a book in the church wherein 
Warwick was buried. But little notice has been taken of this singular 
event by our historians, and, except for some collateral evidence, the 
authenticity of it might be doubted ; but the representation of this duke 
with an imperial crown on . his head, and a sceptre before him, in an 
ancient window of the collegiate church of Warwick, leaves no doubt 
that such an event did take place. This honourable mark of the royal 
favour, however, conveyed no royal authority, the king having no power 
to transfer the sovereignty of any part of his dominions, as is observed 
by Lord Coke, in his Institutes, where this transaction is discussed ; and 
there is reason to conclude that, though titular king, he did not even 
possess the lordship of the island, no surrender appearing from Duke 
Humphrey, who was then living, and had a grant for the term of his 
life. Selden, too, in his Titles of Honour^ p. 29, treating of the title ot 



i 2 6 STORY OF JANE SHORE. 

the King of Man, observes that, " it was like that of the King of the 
Isle of Wight, in the great Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, who was 
crowned king under Henry VI." Henry Beauchamp was also crowned 
King of Guernsey and Jersey. 



STORY OF JANE SHORE AND SHOREDITCH. 

The strange sad story of this "beautiful, frail, and unfortunate fair" 
is one of the most curious episodes of its class in our history. It has 
been told in chronicle, poem, and drama ; and although its details are 
unfit for readers of tender years, few narratives have been more widely 
read. The materials are so abundant that we must, of necessity, restrict 
ourselves to the leading incidents. 

Sir Thomas More says : — " What Jane's father's name was, or where 
she was bom, is not certainly known." Both More and Stow tell us 
she was born in London. She was, More adds, " worshipfully friended, 
honestly brought up, and very well married, saving somewhat too soon ; 
her husband was an honest citizen, young and goodly, and of good 
substance." He was by trade a goldsmith, and resided in Lombard 
Street. Whether he was banker to Edward IV. is unknown. The 
Shore family at this period were very opulent ; and soon after this time, 
Richard Shore was an alderman of London (1505), and he is thought 
to have been related to Jane's husband, with whom she was not happily 
allied. She lived with Shore seven years; and about 1470 she became 
concubine to Edward IV. We are not told, except in legend, how the 
king knew of her beauty, or when or where he first saw her. Philip 
de Comines, who personally knew Edward, says : — " He was the most 
beautiful prince my eyes ever beheld !" "the most beautiful man of his 
time." In his resplendent court Jane delighted all by her beauty, plea- 
sant behaviour, and proper wit, for she could "read well and write," 
which few of the highest ladies then could. " Merry in company, ready 
and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunt- 
ing without displeasure, and not without disport; in whom King 
Edward took special pleasure, whose favour, to say the truth, for sin it 
were to belie the devil, she never abused to any man's hurt, but to many 
a man's comfort and relief. When the King took displeasure, she 
would mitigate and appease his mind ; where men were out of favour, 
she would bring them in his grace ; for many that highly offended, she 
obtained pardon ; of great forfeitures she gat them remittance ; and, 
finally, in many weighty suits, she stood many men in great stead, 
either for none or for very small rewards, and those rather gay than 
rich ; either for that she was content with the deed itself well done, or 
that she delighted to be sued unto, or to show what she was able to do 
with the king, or for that wanton women be not always covetous.'' 

Such was her temper : now let us view her person. Sir Thomas 
More says : — " There was nothing of her body that you would have 
changed, unless you would have wished her something higher." 
Drayton, in his poetical epistle from Jane to her royal lover, has notes. 



STORY OF JANE SHORE. 127 

by which it appears that " her stature was mean, her hair of a dark jet, 
her face round and full, her eyes grey, delicate harmony being between 
each part's proportion and each proportion's colour ; her body fat, 
white, and smooth ; her countenance cheerful, and like to her condition. 
Edward died at Westminster in 1482 ; and within two months Jane 
was accused by Gloucester, the usurper, of sorcery and witchcraft, who 
caused her to be deprived of the whole of her property, about 3000 
marks, a sum now equal to about 20,000/. ; she was then committed to 
the Tower, but was acquitted for want of proof of sorcery. She was 
next committed by the sheriffs to Ludgate prison, charged with having 
been the concubine of Hastings ; for which she walked in penance from 
the cathedral to St. Paul's Cross, with a taper in her hand, wearing only 
her kirtle, or petticoat, in London streets ; and then again committed 
to the prison of Ludgate, where she was kept close prisoner. Mean- 
while, Lynom, the king's solicitor, would have married Jane but for the 
interference of King Richard. We have no account of Shore after she 
had left him, except that he retired from London, it is said, to Flanders. 
Rowe, in his drama, gives this portrait of Jane in her penance : — 

Submissive, sad, and lowly was her look ; 
A burning taper in her hand she bore, 
And on her shoulders, carelessly confus'd, 
With loose neglect her lovely tresses hung ; 
Upon her cheek a faintish flush was spread : 
Feeble she seem'd, and sorely smit with pain, 
While, barefoot, as she trod the flinty pavement, 
Her footsteps all along were mark'd with blood. 
Yet silent still she pass'd, and unrepining, 
Her streaming eyes bent upon the earth ; 
Except, when in some bitter pang of sorrow, 
To Heav'n she seem'd in fervent zeal to raise, 
And beg that mercy man denied her here ! 

After the death of King Richard at Bosworth, Jane was liberated 
from Ludgate. She never married again, nor was her property restored 
to her. There is a tradition that she strewed flowers at the funeral of 
Henry VII. Calamitous was the rest of her life, and she died in 1533 
or 1534, when more than fourscore years old ; and no stone tells where 
her remains were deposited. Sir Thomas More says of her penury and 
good deeds : " At this day she beggeth of many at this day living, that 
at this day had begged if she had not been." For almost half a century 
Jane Shore was a living monitress to avoid illicit love, however fascinat- 
ing; and the biographer, poet, and historian, made her so for nearly 
three centuries after her death. 

Thomas Churchyard, who died in 1604, wrote a poem showing 
" How Shore's wife, King Edward the Fourth's concubine, was by 
King Richard despoyled of all her goods, and forced to doe open 
penance." Dr. Percy, in his Reliques, prints a ballad from a black-letter 
copy in the Pepys Collection. It is entitled " The Woefull Lamenta- 
tion of Jane Shore, a goldsmith's wife in London, some time King 
Edward IV. his Concubine. To the tune of ' Live with me/ &c." 
Here the poet makes Jane die of hunger after doing her penance, and a 



128 STORY OF JANE SHORE. 

man be hanged for relieving her ; both of which are fictions that led to 
the popular error of Jane's dying of hunger in a ditch, and thus giving 
its name to Shoreditch, a name now proved to have been of much 
greater antiquity. 

Shoreditch is an ancient manor and parish, extending from Norton 
Folgate to Old-street, and from part of Finsbury to Bethnal-green. It 
was originally a village on the Roman military highway, called by the 
Saxons Eald (i. e., Old) Street. Stow declares it to have been called 
Soersditch more than 400 years before his time : and Weaver states it to 
have been named from Sir John de Soerdich, lord of the manor, temp. 
Edward III.,* and who was with that king in his wars with France. 
The legend of its being called after Jane Shore dying in a ditch in its 
neighbourhood, is a popular error, traceable to a black-letter ballad in 
the Pepys Collection, entitled, The Woful Lamentation of Jane Shore, a 
Goldsmith's Wife in London, some time King Ed-ward IF. his Concubine; 

I could not get one bit of bread, 
Whereby my hunger might be fed ; 
Nor drink, but such as channels yield, 
Or stinking ditches in the field. 
Thus, weary of my life at lengthe, 
I yielded up my vital strength 
Within a ditch of loathsome scent, 
Where carrion dogs did much frequent : 
The which now, since my dying daye, 
Is Shoreditch call'd, as writers saye. " 

But this ballad is not older than the middle of the 17th century; and 
no mention is made of Jane so dying in a ballad by Churchyard. Dr. 
Percy erroneously refers Shoreditch to " its being a common sewer, vul- 
garly shore, or drain." It is sometimes called Sorditch, which is the 
most correct, according to the above explanation. An archer of this 
parish, named Barlo, was styled " Duke of Shoreditch " by Henry VIII., 
for having outshot his competitors in a shooting match at Windsor ; 
and the Captain of the Company of Archers of London was long after 
styled " Duke of Shoreditch." In the Beaufoy Collection are four 
Shoreditch tokens, one with figures of Edward IV. and his mistress; 
and the public-house sign of Jane Shore is extant in the High-street. 

Fabyan's Chronicle gives the best account of the punishment of Jane 
Shore, by which it will be seen that however unjust were the charges 
against her, they were no other than customary measures of the times. 
The groundwork of the prosecution against Jane by Richard III. was 
that " she had bewitched the King, so that he had lost the use of his 
arm." The origin of this allegation we find in first of Kings, xiii. 6 
(Jeroboam's hand.) Charges of witchcraft were political tricks in the, 
Middle Ages, to irritate the ignorant public, and prevent commiseration. 
The Barons seriously believed that Piers Gaveston had bewitched King 
Edward II. ; and Fabyan writes concerning the Queen herself of Edward 

* The same family of Soerdich, or Shordich, it is believed, possessed the 
manor of Ickenham, near Uxbridge, and resided at Ickenham Hall, from the 
reign of Edward III. to our own time. The last of this family, Paul Ricaut 
Shordiche, civil engineer, grandson of Michael Shordiche, of Ickenham Manor, 
died at Antigua, July 13th, 1865. 



"HISTORIC DOUBTS ON RICHARD III: 



129 



IV., "how the Kynge was enchaunted by the Duchesse of Bedford." 
Jane Shore's penance was the same as had been previously inflicted (20 
Hen. VI.) upon Eleanor Cobham, first mistress, and afterwards wife, of 
the Duke of Gloucester, upon a similar charge of sorcery. As to the 
confiscation of Jane's property, this was a common measure under an 
impeachment of treason. In 1468(7 Edward IV.) Sir Thomas Cooke, 
notwithstanding acquittal, was robbed of his property in a similar 
manner. As to Jane's vagrancy and destitution, "the Erie of Oxen- 
forde remained prisoner nearly twelve years, during which time his 
wife was not suffered to see him ; nor had she anything to live upon, 
but common charity, or what she might gette with her needle, or 
other soche cunnyng, as she exercised." Thus it appears that the suffer- 
ings of Jane were only common to her with others ; and in consequence 
that the incidents related in the ballads are probably correct, because 
they are supported by analogies. 



"HISTORIC DOUBTS ON RICHARD THE THIRD." 

This notable work, by Horace Walpole, was published by him, Feb. 
1, 1768 : " twelve hundred copies were printed and sold so very fast, that 
a new edition was undertaken the next day of 1 000 more, and published 
the next week." 

The work is among the best of Walpole's writings. It has two plates 
of portraits, from the Roll at Kimbolton, which Lord Sandwich bor- 
rowed for Walpole, who writes : " It is as long as my Lord Lyttle- 
ton's History ; but by what I can read of it (for it is both ill written 
and much decayed), it is not a roll of kings, but of all that have been 
possessed of, or been Earls of Warwick ; or have not— for one of the 
first earls is ./Eneas. How, or wherefore, I do not know, but amongst the 
first is Richard the Third, in whose reign it was finished, and with whom 
it concludes. He is there again with his wife and son, and Edward the 
Fourth, and Clarence and his wife, and Edward their son (who, un- 
luckily, is a little old man), and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, their 
daughter. But why do I say with these ? there is everybody else, too; 
and what is most meritorious, the habits of all the times are admirably 
well-observed from the most savage ages. Each figure is tricked with a 
pen, well drawn, but neither coloured nor shaded. Richard is straight, 
but thinner than my print ; his hair short, and exactly curled in the 
same manner ; not so handsome as mine, but what one might really 
believe intended for the same countenance, as drawn by a different pain- 
ter, especially when so small ; for the figures in general are not so long 
as one's finger. His Queen is ugly, and with just such a square fore- 
head as in my print, but I cannot say like it. Nor, indeed, where forty- 
five figures out of fifty (I have not counted the number) must have been 
imaginary, can one lay great stress on the five. I shall, however, have 
these figures copied, especially as I know of no other image of the 
son." 

Walpole, if he was advocating a paradox, believed it to be a truth ; 



130 



"HISTORIC DOUBTS ON RICHARD Hi: 



and in the subsequent encounter with Hume, he has the advantage 
which thorough acquaintance with the subject must always give over 
the ablest antagonist, whose original views were based upon superficial 
knowledge. 

Walpole sent a copy of his work to Voltaire, who, in his letter of 
acknowledgment, agrees with Walpole, that Richard was not so black 
as painted, and concluded thus : " Votre rose blanche et votre rose rouge 
avaient de terribles epines pour la nation." Those gracious kings are all 
a pack of rogues. " En lisant l'histoire des York et des Lancastre, et 
bien d'autres, on croit lire l'histoire des voleurs de grand chemin. Pour 
votre Henri Sept, il n'etait que coupeur de bourses." 

Walpole adds that the childish improbabilities in the general his- 
tory of Richard place his reign on a level with the " Story of Jack the 
Giant Killer." 

We shall not enumerate the annotators who have followed Walpole ; 
the most recent of them, Mr. Gairdner, in the volume published by the 
authority of the Master of the Rolls, adduces fresh evidence, all credi- 
table to the character of Richard. A critic, in the Athenaeum, gives, as new 
to the general public : " There are documents here in London, the first 
portion of which seems to have been written by a clerk or secretary. The 
scribe, however, failing perhaps to seize the meaning of his master, lays 
down the pen, and the remainder of the dispatch is finished in Richard's 
own bold and steady hand, and subscribed thereto is the signature of his 
name, boldly dashed forth, yet with such grace and correctness that 
kings and gentlemen generally of this day might take it for an exam- 
ple, which, after much practice, they would probably not equal."* 

Sir Thomas More, the acknowledged origin of the scandalous history, 
resided with Bishop Morton, the inveterate enemy of Gloucester. 
M ore's version was revived and exaggerated by the Tudor chroniclers, 
and copied by Shakspeare, who has merely verified the language of the 
early historians, who based their authority on More. Shakspeare 
follows Holinshed; so also does Hume; and Holinshed follows Hall, 



* The autograph of Richard III. is of great rarity. When Dr. Dibdin was on 
his Northern Tour (published in 1839), at Whitburn, in the neighbourhood of 
Tynemouth, he had the good fortune to be introduced to Sir Hedworth and 
Lady Williamson, at a sort of manorial residence, with a good large quantity of 
garden and pleasure-ground, and the sea glittering at its extreme boundary. 
Finding Dr. Dibdin's appetite for antiquarian researches to be somewhat 
insatiable, Sir Hedworth was so good as to introduce the Doctor to his old 
trunk of family seals, in white and red wax ; Sir Hedworth, then one of the 
members" for North Durham, being a descendant from an old baronetcy, and by 
the female line traced his ancestry to a considerably remote period. " Much," 
writes Dr. Dibdin, "was Sir Hedworth amused in witnessing my modified 
ecstasies on finding a good large seal or two of the Edwards — one in fine con- 
dition, and perhaps of the first Edward ; but when I came to examine a 
warrant of Richard III., then Duke of Gloucester, appointing an ancestor of 
mine host, of the name of Hudleston, Deputy Guardian or Warden of the West 
Marches, with the autograph of the duke, and a part of the seal, appended— 
there was no keeping mv expressions of joy within moderate bounds ; as the 
autograph and seal of Richard, at that period, are of the most rare occurrence." 
Accordingly, the relic is engraved in Dr. Dibdin's ' ' boke." 



"HISTORIC DOUBTS ON RICHARD Hi:* 131 

and Hall follows Polydore Vergil. Shakspeare's Lancastrian partialities 
have turned history upside down, or rather inside out 

No record of Richard's time or reign affords any foundation for the 
mistakes, discrepancies, and falsifications related of him, except John 
Rous, the recluse of Warwick, who was an avowed Lancastrian, and a 
bitter enemy of the line of York ; and he certifies that Gloucester 
was " small of stature, having a short face, and uneven shoulders," which 
have been exaggerated into a crooked back. 

Stow, who was born forty years after Richard's death, was told by 
some ancient men, who had seen the King, that he was "of bodily shape 
comely enough, only of low stature." 

It seems now to be accepted that even Henry VII., its alleged vindi- 
cator in the opinion of Mr. Newdegate, put the young Earl of Warwick, 
son of the Duke of Clarence, out of the way, to induce the King of 
Spain to give his daughter Catherine to his own son, Prince Arthur. At 
least, this is the latest light thrown by Mr. Gairdner, under the Record 
Commission, on the indifference to the family principle shown by Tudors 
and Plantagenets in common. 

Sir George Buck, the first historian who defended Richard, agrees 
with Philip de Comines, and with the rolls of parliament ; and late re- 
searches into our ancient records, state-papers, and Parliamentary his- 
tory, place Buck's history in a more credible light than could have been 
allowed to it some years since, and fix both him and Lord Orford as 
higher authorities than those who wrote professedly to please the Tudor 
dynasty. 

The prejudiced pen of Bacon describes Richard as a "prince in mili- 
tary virtue approved, jealous of the honour of the English nation, and 
likewise a good law-maker for the ease and solace of the common 
people." " In no king's reign," said Sir Richard Baker, "were better 
laws made than in the reign of this man." And so sensible appears 
Bacon to have been of the injustice done to Richard, that he says: 
" Even his virtues themselves were conceived to be feigned." 

The Chronicles of Fleetwood, a Yorkist, and Warkworth, a Lan- 
castrian, both within about the same period, exculpate Gloucester from 
the charge of the murder of Edward of Lancaster. " All the 
other narratives," says Mr. Bruce, in his introduction to Fleetwood's 
Chronicles, " either emanated from partisans of the adverse faction, or 
were written after the subsequent triumph of the House of Lan- 
caster." 

Mr. Heneage Jesse, in Richard III. and his Contemporaries, is disposed 
to acquit Richard of the murders of King Henry and his son, and of 
being present and accessory to the execution of Clarence. He argues 
to the effect that Prince Edward was not stabbed in cold blood after the 
battle of Tewkesbury, but was slain in the melee as he fled with the rest 
of the routed Lancastrians. The evidence is scanty to prove even that 
Richard was present when Henry VI. was murdered in the Tower, if 
he was so murdered. Unquestionably Richard could not have met the 
Lady Anne under the circumstances described by Shakspeare ; for when 
the corpse of Henry was on its way to Chertsey Richard was marching 

K2 



i 3 2 BEDSTEAD OF KING RICHARD III. 

with his brother, King Edward, against the bastard Falconbriclge; while 
Anne, who had fallen into the hands of Edward after the battle of 
Tewkesbury, was, in all probability, in close custody with her mother- 
in-law, Queen Margaret, in the Tower. There is reason, too, for in- 
ferring that at the time of Clarence's trial and execution Richard was 
quietly discharging the duties of his government in the north of 
England. On all these points Mr. Jesse holds to the newer lights, as 
also on the old question of debate whether Richard was half as deformed 
in person as his enemies have painted him. 

More recent evidences of Richard's popularity have been brought to 
light by Mr. John G. Nichols, Mr. Wright, and others. Unquestionably 
the array of bishops at his coronation, and of those who congratulated 
him afterwards, such as Waynflete and Alcock, implied a remarkable 
indifference to "the family principle" on the part of the venerable 
bench ; else this principle was not so exceptionally violated by the 
king as the Warwickshire gentlemen — the Shakspeares and Newde- 
gates — have inferred. Rous's Roll, an authentic document, describes 
Richard as ruling " in his realm full commendably ; punishing offenders 
of his laws, especially extortioners and oppressors of his commons;" 
and it goes on to assert that " he got great thanks of God, and love of 
all his subjects, rich and poor, and great laud of the people of all other 
lands about him." 



THE BEDSTEAD OF KING RICHARD III. 

The history of this assumed relic of the Plantagenet King, is thus 
told by Professor Babington, of St. John's College, Cambridge. 

In Nichols's History of Leicestershire (vol. i. p. 380) the bedstead on 
which the King is supposed to have slept is both described and figured : — 
" Richard slept at the Blue Boar Inn (at Leicester) The bed- 
stead whereon he is supposed to have slept (on the night before the 
bat-tie of Bosworth) is still preserved, and its history is thus handed 
down." 

Nichols goes on to describe at large how, in 1613, Mrs. Clark, who 
kept that inn, was robbed by her servant-maid and seven men, who after- 
wards murdered her, and were executed for the crime.* Mrs. Clark, it 
seems, had in the reign of Elizabeth discovered that the bed had a double 
bottom, the intermediate space being filled with gold. This treasure, left 
to her by her husband in the following reign, was the inciting cause of 
the robbery and murder. A very curious extract from Sir R. Twysden's 
common-place books about this may be seen in Notes and Queries for 
1857, page 102. Nichols proceeds to add that it came afterwards into 
the hands of Mr. Alderman Drake. To cut matters short, after the 
death of my father, the Rev. Matthew Drake Babington, Rural Dean 
of Ackley, in Leicestershire, it came into my hands. It was examined 
by several antiquaries, among the rest by my learned friend Mr. M. H. 



* It seems that the murder was committed in 1605, not 1613 ; and one woman 
burnt, and only one man hanged for the offence. — Notes and Que?ies for 1857, 
P- 154- 



BEDSTEAD OF KING RICHARD III. 133 



Bloxam, of Rugby. He was decidedly of opinion that the bed, a most 
beautiful piece of work, was of the age of Elizabeth. Although few 
people know the bed better than I do, as I have many a time struck my 
head against its projecting carved work, when first waking in the morn- 
ing, yet it belongs to a class of antiquities about which I do not feel dis- 
posed to deliveran opinion ex cathedra. Mr. James Thompson {Notes 
and Queries for 1857, p. 154) speaks with prudent doubtfulness. After 
showing from Cor'yate's Crudities that the traditional bed of Richard III. 
was exhibited among the " Penny sights of the reign of James I." in 
161 1, he goes on to say, "The question yet remains doubtful whether 
the bedstead on which Richard III. slept was ever exhibited, and also 
whether he ever concealed gold in any bedstead. That he lodged in the 
Blue Boar, which inn was taken down about twenty years ago, I think 
is sufficiently established ; but beyond this fact it does not appear to me 
safe to go on this head in the way of historical affirmation." The ex- 
ternal evidence in favour of its genuineness is decidedly strong, and with 
regard to the internal evidence, the representation of the Holy Sepulchre 
in one of its compartments, may be thought by some to savour of the 
reign of Richard III. rather than of Elizabeth. Those who consider 
the style of carving to be manifestly of the 16th, and net of the 15th 
century, can, of course, enjoy their opinion, which may very probably 
be correct. It is certainly very specious, and I must confess that I in- 
cline to it. The bed, I may say in conclusion, is now in the possession of 
Mr. W. P. Herrick, of Beaumanor Park. It was with regret that I 
parted with it, having then no house in which to keep so large a piece of 
furniture ; but the regret was much diminished by knowing that it would 
be placed in such excellent hands as those of my friend Mr. Herrick." 

To this statement, the accomplished archaeologist, Mr. Henry Shaw, 
F.S.A., has replied as follows: — " I had supposed the tradition of the old 
bedstead formerly preserved at the Blue Boar Inn, at Leicester, having 
been the one on which Richard III. slept the night before the battle of 
Bosworth, had been long since set at rest to the satisfaction of those who 
possessed 'only a moderate acquaintance with the archaeology of archi- 
tecture, as every genuine example of ancient carving carries its own 
chronology, within a short period, in the style of its design and the cha- 
racter of its execution. When I published my Specimens of Ancient Fur- 
niture, in the year 1836, I made most diligent search for examples of an 
ancient date, and was surprised to find how few remained belonging to 
an earlier time than the beginning of the 16th century. The oldest bed 
I met with then, or have heard of since, was of the time of Henry VIII., 
and belonged to a clergyman in the neighbourhood of Blackburn, who 
had bought it out of an old manor-house. The posts and back are most 
elaborately carved in the latest style of Gothic art, but unfortunately the 
cornice has disappeared. 

" If, however, real specimens of ancient furniture are wanting, ivory 
carvings, stained glass, and more especially illuminated MSS ; , supply us 
with an abundance of examples to show the changes of fashion in those 
articles during the Middle Ages. 

" In the earlier times beds were almost invariably mere couches. As 
luxury advanced they were enlarged, the counterpanes were formed of 



134 THE DUKE OF CLARENCE. 

the richest materials, gorgeously embroidered with the arms and badges 
of their owners, and, from their great cost, bequeathed to their de- 
scendants from one generation to another. These beds were usually- 
surmounted with testers or canopies of the richest coloured silks, edged 
with party-coloured fringes, and suspended from the rafters of the 
rooms by silken cords. The head of the bed was usually of oak, richly 
carved in panels. Side curtains appear, but foot posts are very rarely 
seen. 

"The modern four-poster came into general use in the time of Eliza- 
beth, when these features frequently assumed enormous proportions, and 
were almost invariably covered with the most elaborate carvings. As 
these embellishments are in the Renaissance style — said to have been in- 
troduced into this country by Holbein — they could not appear on a bed- 
stead of the time of Richard III. The one removed from the Blue Boar 
Inn is an ordinary example of the Elizabethan type, of which many 
specimens still remain ; one of the most beautiful, and certainly the most 
interesting, being the ' Great Bed at Ware,' mentioned by Shakspeare 
in his Twelfth Night." 



WAS THE DUKE OF CLARENCE DROWNED IN A 
BUTT OF MALMSEY? 

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is alleged to have participated in the death 
of Clarence, but the charge rests exclusively on a vague presumption of 
his having hardened the heart of King Edward, already sufficiently in- 
censed against Clarence, and ready at all times to trample down all ties 
of relationship and all feelings of mercy, when his throne was in danger 
or his vindictiveness was roused. Clarence had joined Warwick in im- 
peaching his title, and denying his legitimacy. Untaught by experience, 
he had recently indulged in intemperate language against his sovereign, 
who actually appeared in person as the principal accuser at the trial, 
which was one of the most solemn description known to the law. The 
Duke was found guilty by his peers, and both Houses of Parliament 
petitioned for his execution, and afterwards passed a Bill of attainder. 
He was also peculiarly obnoxious to the Queen and her friends, Rivers, 
Hastings, and the Greys. 

" The only favour," says Hume, "which the King granted his brother 
after his condemnation, was to leave him the choice of his death, and he 
was privately drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower ; a whimsical 
choice, which implies that he had an extraordinary passion for that 
liquor." Mr. Bayley (History of the Toqver) suggests, that Clarence's well- 
known fondness for this wine was the foundation of the story, although, 
so far as evidence goes, the fondness for the wine is here the mother of 
conjecture ; and we rather agree with Walpole, that " whoever can 
believe that a butt of wine was the engine of his death, may believe that 
Richard helped him into it, and kept him down till he was suffocated." 
Yet, this is precisely what some do believe ormaintain. " After Clarence," 
writes Sandford, " had offered his mass-penny in the Tower of London, 



FIRST PAPER-MILL IN ENGLAND. 135 

he was drowned in a butt of malmsey, his brother, the Duke of 
Gloucester, assisting thereat with his own proper hands." 

The most plausible solution of the enigma is suggested by Shakspeare, 
when he makes the First Murderer tell the second : " Take him over the 
costard with the hilt of thy sword, and throw him into the malmsey 
butt in the next room." The dialogue on Clarence awakening is, — 

Clar. Where art thou, keeper ? Give me a cup of wine. 
xst Murd. You shall have wine enough, my lord, anon. 

After a brief parley, the First Murderer stabs him, exclaiming, — 

Take that, and that ; if all this will not do, 
I'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within. 

He carries out the body, and returns to tell his relenting comrade, — 

Well, I'll go hide the body in some hole, 
Till that the duke give order for his burial. 

Clarence's groans may have been stifled in a full butt conveniently 
nigh, or the body may have been temporarily hidden in an empty one. — 
Edinburgh Review, No. 234. 

It is conjectured that Clarence was sentenced to be poisoned, and 
that the fatal drug may have been conveyed to him in malmsey. All 
that is positively known is simply that he was put to death " secretly 
within the Tower."— Chronicle of Croyland. 



THE FIRST PAPER MILL IN ENGLAND. 
It was long believed that at Dartford, in Kent, paper was first made 
in England ; but it is now proved that a paper-mill had existed in this 
country almost a century before the date of the mill at Dartford. In 
the Household Book of Henry VII. is entered : 

1498. For a rewarde geven at the paper mylne, 16s. 8d. 

1499. Geven in rewarde to Tate of the mylne, 6s. 8d. 

And in the English translation of Bartholomew de Proprietatibus 
Rerum, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, we read of J ohn Tat e 
having lately in England made the paper which was used for printing 
his book. We also gather from an early specimen of blank verse, A 
Tale of Two Swannes, written, it is believed, by a native of Ware, and 
printed in 1590, that the mill belonging to John Tate, was situate at 
Hertford ; and the extract from the privy purse expenses of Henry VII. 
quoted above, date May 25, 1498, has reference to this particular mill, 
as the entry immediately preceding shows that the king went to Hert- 
ford two days before, namely, on the 23rd of May. And in Herbert's 
edition of Ames's Typographical Antiquities, we read that "this mill was 
where Seel or Seed Mill now is, at the end of Hertford town, towards 
Stevenage; and that an adjoining meadow is still called Paper Mill 
Mead." F 

Now, the paper-mill at Dartford, long reputed to have been the first 
in England, was established at least no years later than that at Hert- 



136 JOCULAR CRUELTY. 

ford, in 1588, by John Spillman, jeweller to the queen, who was pleased 
to grant him a licence " for the sole gathering, for ten years, of all rags, 
&c, necessary for the making of such paper." This mill is described 
in a poem by Thomas Churchyard, published shortly after the founda- 
tion of the mill ; the writer says : 

Then he that made for us a paper-mill, 
Is worthy well of love, a worlde's good will ; 
And though his name be Spillman by degree, 
Yet Helpman now he shall be calde by mee." 

Spillman was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. He was buried in the 
church at Dartford, beneath a sumptuous tomb, which, in 1858, was 
restored by " The Legal Society of Paper Makers," the funds being 
subscribed by the trade in different parts of England, especially in the 
county of Kent. But we find a paper-mill mentioned by Shakspeare, 
in his play of Henry VI., the plot of which appears laid at least a cen- 
tury previously ; in fact he introduces it as an additional weight to the 
charges which Jack Cade is made to bring against Lord Say, the pas- 
sage ending with, "contrary to the king his crown and dignity, thou hast 
built a paper-mill." Mr. Herring, who has written the best account of 
Paper-making, tells us that North Newton mill, near Banbury, in Oxford- 
shire, (then the property of Lord Say and Sele,) has been set down as 
the first paper-mill erected in this country, and that referred to by 
Shakspeare. Now, the first Lord Say and Sele who had property in 
Oxfordshire, which he acquired by marriage, was the son of the first 
Lord Say, to whom Shakspeare makes reference. 

In some researches on Water-marks in paper, foolscap is traced, 1 66 1 , to 
the following traditional story : " When Charles I. found his revenues 
short, he granted several privileges amounting to monopolies ; and 
among these was the manufacture of paper, at which time all English 
paper bore in watermark the royal arms. The Parliament, under 
Cromwell, made jests of this law in every conceivable manner ; and 
among other indignities to the memory of Charles, it was ordered that 
the royal arms be removed from the paper, and the fool's-cap and bells 
be substituted. These were also removed when the Rump Parliament 
was prorogued ; but paper of the size of the Parliament's Journals still 
bears the name of foolscap." 



SIR WILLIAM KINGSTON S JOCULAR CRUELTY. 

In 1549 (3 Edward VI.) when sedition raged in Cornwall, among the 
rebels, perforce, was the Mayor of Bodmin, to whom the Provost 
Marshal, Sir William Kingston, sent word he would come and dine 
with his worship. The Mayor, accordingly, made great provision, and 
a little before dinner the Provost took the Mayor aside, and whispered 
him that an execution must be done that day in the town, and therefore 
required to have a pair of gallows set up against dinner should be done ; 
the Mayor failed not of his charge. After dinner the Provost in- 
quired for the gallows, which the Mayor having showed him, he asked 



SIR THOMAS MORE. ~ -• 137 

his worship if he thought them strong enough ; " Yes," said the Mayor. 
" Well," replied the Provost, "get you up speedily, for they were pro- 
vided for you." " I hope," answered the poor Mayor, " you mean not as 
you speak." " In faith," said the Provost, " there is no remedy, for you 
have been a busy rebel ;" and so, without respite or defence, he was, 
hanged to death, a most uncourteous part for a guest to offer his host. 

Near Bodmin dwelt also a miller, also a busy rebel, and who, fearing 
the approach of the Provost, told a sturdy fellow, his servant, that he 
must go from home, and, if any one enquired after him, he (the 
servant) should say that he was the miller, and had been so for three 
years. So the Provost came, and called for the miller, when the servant 
said he was the man. " How long have you kept the mill ?" asked the 
Provost ; " these three years," answered the servant. Then the Provost 
commanded his men to lay hold on him, and hang him on the next tree. 
At this the fellow cried out that he was not the miller but the miller's 
man : " Nay," said the Provost, " I will take you at your word, and if 
thou bee'st the miller, thou art a busie knave ; if thou bee'st not, thou 
art a false, lying knave ; and however, thou can'st never do thy master 
better service than to hang for him ;" and so, without more ado, he was 
dispatched. — B aker' s Chronicle. 



SIR THOMAS MORE AND THE BUTLERSHIP OF 
LINCOLN'S INN. 

The biographers of Sir Thomas More are almost entirely silent as to 
the family from which he sprung. They ascend no higher than Sir 
Thomas's father, Sir John More, he being no less a person than one ot 
the superior judges for at least twelve years. That Roper is silent about 
the Chancellor's pedigree is surprising; seeing that he was not only Sir 
Thomas's son-in-law, but wrote his biography, considered as the best 
authority for all that is known of the private history of the family ; yet 
he is almost silent on this point, which must be ascribed to a delicate 
disinclination to expose that which he might fear would, in some minds, 
derogate from the respect with which the Chancellor wa3 regarded. His 
great-grandson, Cresacre More, in his biography, endeavours, with a 
natural desire to magnify his ancestors, to show that they were of gentle 
descent, deriving his argument from the epitaph written by Sir Thomas, 
which he misquotes ; and by the arms alleged to be borne by Sir John, 
which he misunderstands. He cites the epitaph, " Thomas More, born 
of no noble family, but of an honest stock "; and he afterwards argues 
upon the word " nobilis" as if it occurred in the original. But no such 
word is really to be found there. The passage stands thus : " Thomas 
Morus, urbe Londinensi, familia non celebri, sed honesta,natus;" words 
simple enough, and which seem plainly to intimate that he could 
trace his pedigree little beyond his father. As to the arms, Cresacre 
More says : " Judge More bore arms from his birth, having his coat 
quartered ;" but there is no evidence that this was the case, and none of 
the pedigrees in the Heralds' College begin with any earlier name than 



j 3 8 ROASTING AN ABBOT. 

that of Sir John; and who his father was no writer has yet explained. 
It is curious, also, that in what is told of Sir John himself, contradictory- 
accounts are given of the Inns of Court to which he belonged, of the 
bench on which he sat as judge, and of the age at which he died. 

It seems impossible, therefore, to come to any other conclusion than 
that the family was an obscure one ; that John More— first the butler, 
afterwards the steward, and finally the reader of Lincoln's Inn, was the 
Chancellor's grandfather ; and that John More, junior, who was also at 
one time butler there, was the Chancellor's father, and afterwards the 
judge. Not only does this descent suit precisely the " non celebri, sed 
honesta, natus " in Sir Thomas More's epitaph, but it explains the silence 
of his biographers, and accounts for the Judge and the Chancellor at- 
tending the readings of a society with which their family had been so 
closely connected. 

The settlement of this question is important ; since it proves that at 
a time when the barriers between the different grades of society were far 
more difficult to be passed than in the present day, such a combination 
of talent with integrity and moral worth as distinguished the progenitors 
of Sir Thomas More, could overcome all the prejudices in favour of high 
descent which were the natural results of the feudal system. — Edward 
Foss, F.S.A., Archteologia, vol. xxxv. pp. 27 — 33. 

What an idea of the dismantling of our nature is conveyed by the few 
words which Roper, Sir Thomas More's son-in-law, relates ! He had 
seen Henry VIII. walking round the Chancellor's garden at Chelsea, 
with his arm round his neck. He could not help congratulating More 
on being the object of so much kindness. " I thank our Lord, I find 
his Grace my very good lord indeed ; and I believe he doth as singularly 
favour me as any subject in his realm. However, son Roper, I may 
tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would- win 
a castle in France, it would not fail to be struck off;' 



ROASTING AN ABBOT. 

The Earl of Cassilis, who, from his great power in Ayrshire, was 
usually called the King of Carrick, was desirous of obtaining certain 
leases and grants of feu affecting the lands of the abbey of Crossraguei, 
in his neighbourhood. For this purpose he entrapped the Abbot, 
Mc Allan Stewart, in the month of October, 1570, to a small tower over- 
hanging the sea, commonly called the Black Vault of Denure. Here, 
when the abbot expected to be treated with a collation, he was carried to 
a private chamber, and, instead of wine and venison, and other 
good cheer, he saw only a great barred chimney with a fire beneath 
it. In this cell the deeds were laid before him, and he was required to 
execute them. So soon as he attempted to excuse himself the tragedy 
commenced. He was stripped naked, and stretched out on the bars of 
iron, to which he was secured, while the fire beneath was adjusted, so as 
now to bum his legs, now his shoulders, and so forth, while the Earl 
and his brother kept basting him with oil. This procedure soon re- 



THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII. 139 

moved the abbot's scruples about the alienation of the property of the 
Church ; and when, having intimated his willingness to subscribe the 
deeds required, he was released from his bed of torture, his inhospitable 
landlord addressed him with a hypocritical impudence which is almost 
ludicrous. " Benedicite, Jesu Maria ! you are the most obstinate man 
I ever saw. If I had known you would have been so stubborn, I would 
not for a thousand crowns have handled you in that sort. I never did 
so to man before you." These apologies the hall-roasted abbot was com- 
pelled to receive as sufficient. The story, besides being a curious picture 
of the age, may serve to show that by force used or menaced, the nobles 
of Scotland extorted from the Catholic beneficiaries those surrenders 
and alienations of the Church patrimony which took place at the Refor- 
mation. 



THE REIGN OF HENRY VIII. 

The remarkable History, by Mr. Froude, presents us with what may be 
familiarly called an entirely new portrait of our Eighth Henry, drawn in 
accordance with the principle upon which the author has produced this 
great work. Refusing to view his subject in the light of subsequent 
opinions, or through the medium of modern authorities, and confining 
himself strictly to contemporaneous evidence, Mr. Froude has built his 
history upon the only basis which can satisfy the honest enquirer. Still, 
the results are much controverted ; but h ; s character of Henry, which 
follows, has been described by an able critic as " a favourable exagge- 
ration." 

" Beyond and besides the Reformation, the constitution of these 
islands now rests in large measure on foundations laid in this reign. 
Henry brought Ireland within the reach of English civilization. He 
absorbed Wales and the Palatinate into the general English system. He 
it was who raised the House of Commons from the narrow duty of 
voting supplies and of passing without discussion the measures of the 
Privy Council, and converted them into the first power in the State 
under the Crown. When he ascended the throne so little did the Com- 
mons care for their privileges, that their attendance at the sessions of 
Parliament was enforced by a law. They woke into life in 1529, and 
they became the right hand of the King to subdue the resistance of the 
House of Lords, and to force upon them a course of legislation which 
from their hearts they detested. Other kings, in times of difficulty, sum- 
moned their ' great councils,' composed of peers, or prelates, or muni- 
cipal officials, or any persons whom they pleased to nominate. Henry 
VIII. broke through the ancient practice, and ever threw himself upon 
the representatives of the people. By the Reformation, and by the 
power which he forced upon them, he had so interwoven the House of 
Commons with the highest business of the State that the peers thence- 
forward sunk to be their shadow. 

" Something, too, ought to be said of his individual exertions in the 
details of State administration. In his earlier life, though active and. 



1 4 o THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD. 

assiduous, he found leisure for elegant accomplishments, for splendid 
amusements, for relaxations, careless, extravagant, sometimes question- 
able. As his life drew onwards his lighter tastes disappeared, and the 
whole energy of his intellect was pressed into the business of the Com- 
monwealth. Those who have examined the printed State Papers may- 
form some impression of his industry from the documents, which are 
his own composition, and the letters which he wrote and received ; but 
only persons who have seen the original manuscripts, who have observed 
the traces of his pen in side notes and corrections, and the handwritings of 
his secretaries in diplomatic commissions, in draughts of Acts of Parlia- 
ment, in expositions and formularies, in articles of faith, in proclamations, 
in the countless multitudes of documents of all sorts, secular or ecclesi- 
astical, which contain the real history of this extraordinary reign, — only they 
can realize the extent of labour to which he sacrificed himself, and which 
brought his life to a premature close. His personal faults were great, 
and he shared, besides them, in the errors of his age ; but far deeper 
blemishes would be but as scars upon the features of a sovereign who, in 
trying times, sustained nobly the honour of the English name, and 
carried the Commonwealth securely through the hardest crisis in its 
history." 

The critical writer referred to above (in the Times, April 8, 1858), 
thus sums up his objections to the work: — Vr. Froude's knowledge of 
constitutional law appears deficient : he has not traced out for his readers 
the Tudor polity, and his notions about it seem very incorrect. We dis- 
sent altogether from his theory, that formal indictments or recorded ver- 
d'cts are any proof that the victims of Tudor State trials were guilty of 
the crimes imputed to them ; and, although the real evidence in none of them 
is forthcoming, we think that he should have presumed against its validity 
when we recollect the nature and value of the testimony upon which, in 
better times, State prisoners were convicted. We must also protest 
against the conception under which he contemplates Henry VIII. and 
some other of the personages whom he brings before us in this history. To 
confound tyranny with able strength, to excuse crime on the plea of a 
State necessity, to represent the excesses of force or passion as the cal- 
culations of genius reluctantly compelled to work out its destiny, and to 
try and make us forget all moral considerations in the contemplation of 
power achieving great ends, — this is the leading fallacy of Mr. Froude 
in this conception, and must class him with the idolaters of a base hero- 
worship. We are bound to give this as our opinion, much as we ad- 
mire the great research, the critical art, and the beautiful style of this 
remarkable fragment of the History of England. 



TOURNAMENT OF THE FIELD OF CLOTH OF GOLD. 

In the spring of t 830, there was exhibited in London a most superb 
specimen of painting on glass, the size almost amounting to stupendous, 
being 18 by 24 feet. The term "wincow" can hardly be appli- 
cable to this vast work, for there was no framework visible: but the 



THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD. 141 



entire picture consisted of 350 pieces, of irregular form and size, fitted 
into metal astragals, so contrived as to fall in the shadows, and thus 
to assist the appearance of an uninterrupted and unique picture upon a 
sheet of glass of 430 square feet. 

The subject was " the Tournament of the Field of Cloth of Gold," 
between Henry VIII. and Francis I., in the plain of Ardres, near Calais ; 
a scene of overwhelming gorgeousness, and in the splendour of its 
accessories, well suited to the brilliant effects which are the peculiar 
effects of painting in enamel. The stage of the event represented, was 
the last tourney, on June 25, 1520. The field is minutely described by 
Hall, the chronicler, whose details the painter had closely followed. 
There were artificial trees, with green damask leaves and branches and 
boughs, and withered leaves of cloth of gold ; the trunks being also 
covered with cloth of gold, and intermingled with fruit and flowers of 
Venice gold ; and " their beautie showed farre." In these trees were 
hung shields, emblazoned with "the Kynge of Englande's arms, within 
a gartier, and the French Kynge's within a collar of his Order of Saint 
Michael,' with a close croune, with a flower de lisse in the toppe;" and 
around and above were the shields of the noblemen of the two courts. 
The two Queens were seated in a magnificent pavilion, and next to the 
Queen of England sat Wolsey ; the judges were on stages; the 
heralds, in their tabards, placed at suitable points ; and around were 
gathered the flower of the French and English nobility, to witness this 
closing glory of the sunset of chivalry. 

The action of the picture is thus described:— The trumpets sounded, 
and the two kings and their retinues entered the field; they then put 
down their vizors, and rode to the encounter valiantly, or, in the words 
of Hall, " the ii Kynges were ready, and either of them encountered one 
man-of-arms, the French Kynge to the erleof Devonshire, the Kynge of 
England to the Mounsire Florrenges, and brake his poldron, and him 
disarmed, when ye strokes were stricken, this battle was departed, and 
was much praised." 

The picture contained upwards of one hundred figures, life-size, of 
which forty were portraits, mostly after Holbein and other contempo- 
rary authorities. The armour of the two Kings and the challenger was 
very successfully painted ; their coursers almost breathed chivalric fire, 
and the costumes and heraldic devices presented a blaze of dazzling 
splendour. Among the spectators, the most striking portraits were the 
two Queens, Wolsey, Anne Boleyn, and the Countess of Chateaubriant, 
Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk, and Queen Mary Dowager of 
France, with the ill-fated Duke of Buckingham, whose hasty comment 
upon the extrwagance of the tournament proved his downfall. The 
elaborate richness of the costumes, sparkling with gold and jewels; the 
fleecy, floating feathers of the champions, their burnished armour and 
glittering arms ; the congregated glories of ermine, velvet, and cloth of 
gold ; and the heraldic emblazonry amidst the emerald freshness of the 
foliage, all combined to form a scene of unparalleled sumptuousness. 

The picture was executed in glass by Thomas Wilmhurst (a pupil 
of Muss), from a sketch by R. T. Bone; the horses by Woodward. 



4 2 



CARDINAL WOLSEY. 



The work cost the artist nearly 3000/. It was exhibited in a first-floor 
at No. 15, Oxford-street; and the great picture formed one side of a 
room, painted for the occasion with paneling and carving of the time 
of Henry VIII. It proved very attractive as an exhibition ; the private 
view was attended by the leading artists of the day; and George IV., 
hearing of the work, meditated a visit, but was prevented by illness. A 
descriptive Catalogue of the picture, of several pages, was sold to the 
extent of more than 50,000 copies. The writer of the Catalogue, on first 
seeing the picture, exclaimed, with an impulse approaching vaticination, 
" What, in case of a fire !" Sad, then, to relate, in one unlucky night, 
January 31st, 1832, the picture and the house were entirely burnt in an 
accidental fire ; not even a sketch or study was saved from destruction ; 
and the property was wholly uninsured. Asa specimen of glass-painting 
this work was very successful ; the colours were very brilliant, and the old 
ruby red was all but equalled. The artistic treatment was altogether 
original ; the painters in no instance, borrowing from the contemporary 
picture of the same scene in the Hampton Court Collection. 



CARDINAL WOLSEY NOT A BUTCHER S SON. 

In 1742-4, four large octavo volumes, illustrated with portraits and 
prints, were published under the title of The Life and Times of Cardinal! 
JVolsey, by Joseph Grove, a solicitor, at Richmond, a devoted admirer of 
Wolsey ; and who subsequently printed eight works on the same subject, 
independently of eleven separate Appendices. In the last of them he tells 
us that, in April, 1760, he made a second journey to Ipswich, to collect 
materials concerning the life and actions of Mr. Robert Wolsey, the 
father of the famous Cardinal. He lived in St. Nicholas-street, Ipswich, 
where he had other estates besides his dwelling-house and property in 
Stoke. His lands here were partly pasture; he, after the example 
of other gentlemen in the kingdom, grazed great part of the pasture ; 
and, after the cattle were fit for market, he caused them to be sold. 
From thence the tale was raised of calling Wolsey's father a butcher. 
Mr. Grove says : " Some of our historians, when they are almost out of 
breath in throwing out indecent reflexions upon the Cardinall, fall at last 
upon this gentleman his father, calling him a poor butcher of Ipsnvich; 
though, at the same time, they are totally unacquainted with what he 
was ; whilst others have incautiously attempted to lessen his great cha- 
racter by insinuating that he made the pride of the English nobility stoop 
to the son of a butcher of Ipswich: when, in reality, this butcher, as they 
style him, was as much a gentleman, and lived as respectably, in a private 
manner, as any of their fathers did." 

Thus far Mr. Grove, who then gives some curious details of the 
manner in which some of the nobility disposed of their cattle ; still it is 
the vulgar belief of illiterate persons that Cardinal Wolsey was the son 
of a poor butcher. 

Robert Wolsey, and his wife Joan, were buried in St. Nicholas' 
Church, and their effigies, on brass, were affixed upon the stone laid 



RISE AND FALL OF WOLSEY. 143 

down on their graves ; but these brasses getting loose have been most 
probably sold for old metal. From a book of epitaphs in the Ipswich 
churches, those of St. Nicholas' parish have been torn out. 



RISE AND FALL OF WOLSEY. 

An acute critic has thus traced the genius of this proud Cardinal, the 
means by which he rose, and the false policy by which he fell : — 

" Unlike his fellows in the Council, Wolsey's attention to business was 
not distracted by the duties of a high ecclesiastical appointment, or even 
the claims of large territorial estates. He held at this time no other 
preferment than the deanery of Lincoln. The bent of his genius was 
exclusively political ; but it leaned more to foreign than domestic politics. 
It shone more conspicuous in great diplomatic combinations, for which 
the earlier years of the reign furnished favourable opportunities, than in 
domestic reforms. The more hazardous the conjuncture the higher his 
spirit soared to meet it. " Proud cardinal" and " proud prelate" were 
the terms lavished upon him by men as proud as himself, with much less 
reason to be proud. " He was seven times greater than the Pope himself" 
is no exaggeration of the Venetian Giustiniani, for he saw at his feet 
what no Pope had for a long time seen, and no subject before or since — 
princes, kings, and emperors courting his smiles. Born to command, 
infinitely superior in genius to those who addressed him, he was lofty 
and impatient. But there is not a trace throughout his correspondence 
of the ostentation of vulgar triumph or gratified vanity. It is remarkable 
how small a portion of his thoughts is occupied with domestic affairs ; 
and with religious matters still less. Looking back upon the reign, and 
judging it as we do now by one great event, it appears inconceivable 
that a man of so much penetration and experience should have taken so 
little interest in the religious movements of the day, and regarded Luther 
and the progress of the Reformation with so little concern. He cared 
less for Ciceronianisms and Latin elegancies. When, therefore, questions 
of domestic interest became paramount, and the Sovereign and the nation 
were engrossed in religious discussions, he was no longer required ; and 
so the eclipse of his greatness was inevitable. He had not surrounded 
himself with the support of a cordial band of younger associates, grateful 
to him for their advancement and dependent on him for their guidance. 
With the failing natural to old age, he was more willing to tax his 
waning strength than undertake the ungracious and unpalatable task of 
communicating his designs and explaining their bearings to new asso- 
ciates. This policy was fatal to him ; it angered the King, it raised him 
up a host of enemies in the able and rising courtiers. It left him friend- 
less when he most wanted friends, and the moment an opportunity 
offered of attacking him behind his back it was eagerly seized upon. 
Without any ingratitude on the part of his Sovereign, his fall was inevi- 
table ; the work and the time had outgrown him ; and the expression 
put into his mouth by the great dramatist, ' The King has gone beyond 
me, 1 expresses his profound conviction of the real causes of his disgrace 
and the utter impossibility henceforth of his restoration." — Times, 



144 KATHERINE OF ARRAGON. 

When Henry had decided that Wolsey should go to Asher (Esher), 
a house near to Hampton Court, belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, 
there to reside, the Cardinal delivered up all his moveables to the king's 
use, the greatest store and richest that ever was known, of any subject. 
At Asher, Wolsey and his family continued three or four weeks, with- 
out either bed, sheets, table-cloths, or dishes to eat their meat in, or 
money wherewith to buy any, but what he was forced to borrow of the 
Bishop of Carlisle ! 



STORY OF KATHERINE OF ARRAGON AND HER 
TWO MARRIAGES. 

To the Kimbolton Papers, published in 1864, Mr. Hepworth Dixon 
contributed an account of Queen Katherine, derived from some late re- 
searches among the Spanish archives, at Simancas, and the results amassed 
in Mr. Bergenroth's Calendar, in the Record Office, of which the fol- 
lowing resume is given in the Times journal: — 

Katherine of Arragon is a creature of romance : it is only now, more 
than 300 years after her death, that we are enabled to see her as a real 
woman, with the weaknesses of a woman — an ardent woman, eager to 
marry, determined to marry Henry VIII., fond of her dinner, complain- 
ing that she could not get enough to eat, plunged in debt, deep in little 
plots, and apt to fib. This picture of the real woman is very curious. 
From facts which have been lately discovered, it appears that for 10 
years before he divorced her, Henry sturdily debated with the doctors 
the question whether his marriage with Katherine was legitimate or not. 
Mr. Dixon holds that the new facts discovered prove distinctly that the 
-v marriage was illegal. But what are these facts ? It is now proved that 
not only had K a therine..gone through the religious ceremony of marriage 
with Arthur, the elder brother of Henry, but that after marriage she had 
lived with him. The Empress of the French has in her possession a 
letter" "of Henry VII.'s, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, in which 
the King states that he had sent the Prince and Princess together into 
Wales. The inference is that this little pair, the husband being just 15 
years of age, were in the legal sense man and wife. That Katherine and 
Arthur had lived together may be most true ; but if the proof of that 
fact were all that is required to show that her marriage with Arthur was 
in the legal sense of the term completed, it was a point easily proved 
three hundred years ago, and the doctors and the statesmen and the King 
need not have taken ten years to make up their minds as to the legality 
of the union between Henry and Katherine. Mr. Dixon says it was 
Charles V. who started the Spanish theory that the marriage between 
Katherine and Arthur had never been complete ; but this is not the case. 
He himself quotes the letter of Isabella of Spain addressed to the Duke 
of Estrada just three months after the death of Arthur and long before 
the marriage of Henry, in which, alluding to Katherine, she says, " It 
is already known for a certainty that the said Princess of Wales, our 
daughter, remains as she was here (for so Donna Elvira has written to 



HENRY VIII. AND QUEEN KATHERINE. [45 

us)." When that letter was written Charl.s V. was a mere infant. 
There was really a doubt about the point which probably never can be 
settled ; and it is well understood that this doubt would have been 
settled in Katherine's favour if she had had a son. She had no son ; the 
succession to the throne through a daughter was doubtful in thoss times 
of trouble; Henry consequently magnified the doubts that might be 
raised through the circumstances of his marriage, and he cut the knot 
by divorcing the Queen. In examining this tangled question, we find 
assertion crossing assertion with the most provoking ingenuity. It is 
impossible, however, to get rid of the fact that a doubt there was, and 
that the doubt remains. Prince Arthur was but fifteen years and a half 
old when he died, and at the time of his marriage it is known that his 
health was very delicate. 



THE FIRST-BORN OF HENRY VIII. AND QUEEN 
KATHERINE. 

With few exceptions, there was not a cloud to darken the horizon as 
large as a man's hand ; and whatever scruples might afterwards arise, 
there was nothing to interfere with Henry's affection for Katherine 
Accounts vary as to Katherine's personal appearance, but she had all the 
virtues which befitted a Queen and a woman, the bluest blood of Spain, 
the noblest descent, and the choicest position of the proudest Court in 
Europe. She danced well, was a good musician, was better educated, 
wrote and read much better and composed in English more correctly 
than half the ladies of her Court. Above all, her love and admiration 
for Henry were unbounded. There was not such a paragon in the world. 
He was her hero, her Paladin. " With his health and life," she writes 
with affectionate solicitude to Wolsey, " nothing can come amiss to 
him; without him I can see no power of gDod thing shall fall after it." 
She (good pious soul!) is persuaded that the victory of Flodden and the 
capture of Terouenne " is all owing to the King's piety." Her greatest 
comfort in his absence is to hear from Wolsey of the King's health, and 
all the news of his proceedings. She braids his banners with a piece of 
King James's finery, brought from the field of Flodden by John Glyn, 
and she makes a pilgrimage to our Lady of Walsingham to pray for his 
safe return. 

One great grief had redoubled her anxiety and devotion. To the in- 
expressible delight of the King and the nation, a Prince had been born 
January 1, 1511. A household and officers had been appointed for the 
Royal babe. His Sergeant-at-Arms and his Clerk of the Signet are im- 
mortalized in Privy Seals and in Treasury Warrants. Even the name 
of his nurse, Elizabeth Pointes, is recorded, and that of the Yeoman of 
his beds and wardrobe. A tournament in his honour was proclaimed ; 
but, alas ! the bright vision had faded before the pageant was consum- 
mated. On February 22 this desire of all eyes died ; and there is to be 
seen in this book an entry, signed by the King and his Council, among 
the wages of minstrels, lords of misrule, and salaries of ambassadors, 

L 



146 WHERE WAS ANNE BOLEYN BURIED 9 



grim and emotionless as death itself, an order to pay for 4 o 2 \b of wax 
which John Tomson of London, wax chandler, had made into tapers of 
™£\ ° » 3 r each ' and duly delivered to burn for the benefit of the 
"babes little soul, which was winging its way upwards to the other 
little cherubims who have not had their share of mortal comforts but 
have died m their paptime without further consolations —Times 
journal. 



WHERE WAS ANNE BOLEYN BURIED ? 

It is stated in Miss Strickland's Queens of England (iv. 20 q) that 
there is a tradition at Salle in Norfolk, that the remains of Anne Boleyn 
were removed from the Tower, and interred at midnight, with the rites 
ot Christian burial, in Salle church ; also, that a plain black stone without 
any inscription is supposed to indicate the place where she was buried. 
Blomeneld, the historian of Norfolk, does not allude to the above tradi- 
tion. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his History of Kin? Henry Fill. 
does not state how or where Anne Boleyn was buried. Holinshed' 
Mow, and Speed say that her body, with the head, was buried in the 
choir of the chapel in the Tower ; and Sandford, that she was buried in 
the cnapel of St. Peter in the Tower. 

Burnet, who is followed by Henry, Hume, and Lingard, says that Anne's 
body was thrown into an elm chest made to put arrows in, and was buried 
% ^ Pe Wlthm the Tower > befor e 12 o'clock. Sharon Turner 
(Hist. Henry Fill.) cites the following from Crispin's account of Anne 
Boleyn s execution, written fourteen days after her death :— " Her ladies 
immediately took up her head and the body. They seemed to be with- 
out souls, they were so languid and extremely weak; but fearing that 
their mistress might be handled unworthily by inhuman men they forced 
themselves to do this duty, and though almost dead, at last carried off 
ner dead body wrapt in a white covering." 

«£ Correspondent of the Gentleman s Magazine, Oct. i8irj, describes 
the headless remains of the departed queen as deposited in the arrow- 
chest, and buried in the Tower chapel, before the High Altar. Where 
that stood, the most sagacious antiquary, after a lapse of more than there 
Hundred years, cannot now determine, nor is the circumstance thoueh 
related by eminent writers, clearly ascertained. In a cellar, the' body of 
a person of short stature, without a head, not many years since was found 
and supposed to be the reliques of poor Anne; but soon after reint^rred 
m the same place, and covered with earth." 

The stone in Salle church has been raised, but no remains were to be 
found underneath it. Miss Strickland states that a similar tradition is 
assigned to a black stone in the church at Thornden-on-the-Hill • but 
Morant, {Hist. Essex,) does not notice it.— Notes and Queries, vol. v. 
p. 1464. * 



SIR THOMAS WYAT'S BREAK-DOWN. j 4? 



HOW THE LADY CATHARINE PARR ESCAPED BEING 
BURNED FOR HERESY. 

This Queen of Henry VIII., being an earnest Protestant, had many 
great adversaries, by whom she was accused to the King ot having 
heretical books found in her closet ; and this was so much aggravated 
against her, that her enemies prevailed with the king to sign a warran: 
to commit her to the Tower, with a purpose to have her burnt for heresy. 
This warrant was delivered to Wriothesley, Lord Chancellor, and he by 
chance, or rather, indeed, by God's providence, letting it fall'from him, 
it was taken up, and carried to the Queen, who, having read it, went 
soon after to visit the King, at that time keeping his chamber, by reason 
of a sore leg. Being come to the King, he presently fell to talk with her 
about some points of religion, demanding her resolution thereon. But 
she knowing that his nature was not to be crossed, especially considering 
the case she was in, made him answer that she was a woman accompanied 
with many imperfections, but his Majesty was wise and judicious, of whom 
she must learn, as her lord and head. " Not so, by St. Mary," (said the 
King,) " for you are a doctor, Kate, to instruct us, and not to be instructed 
by us, as often we have seen heretofore." " Indeed, sir," said she, " if your 
Majesty have so conceived, I have been mistaken ; for if heretofore I have 
held talk with you touching religion, it hath been to learn of your Ma- 
jesty some point whereof I stood in doubt, and sometimes that with my 
talk I might make you forget your present infirmity." " And is it even 
so, sweetheart?" (quoth the King,) — "then we are friends;" and so, 
kissing her, gave her leave to depart. 

But soon after was the day appointed by the King's warrant for ap- 
prehending her, on which day the King, disposed to walk in the garden, 
had the Queen with him ; when suddenly, the Lord Chancellor, with 
forty of the guard, came into the garden with a purpose to apprehend 
her, whom as soon as the King saw, he stept to him, and calling him 
knave and fool, bid him avaunt out of his presence. The Queen, seeing 
the King so angry with the Chancellor, began to entreat for him, to 
whom the King said : " Ah, poor soul, thou little knowest what he 
came about ; of my word, sweetheart, he has been to thee a very knave." 
And thus, by God's providence, was this Queen preserved, who else had 
tasted of as bitter a cup as any of his former wives had done. — Baker's 
Chronicle. 



SIR THOMAS WYAT'S BREAK-DOWN. 
On February 3, 1553, Wyat, with an army of 3000 or 4000, came 
to London, but finding the bridge broken, and soldiers placed to resist 
him, after two days' stay in Southwark, removed to Kingston, where he 
found likewise the bridge broken ; yet, with great industrv, suddenly 
repairing it, he passed over his men, and meant with all speed to get to 
the Court before the Queen should have notice of his coming ; and had 
done so, indeed, if a mischance, and an error upon that mischance, 
had not hindered him. For being within six miles of London, 

L 2 



148 CHARACTER OF QUEEN MARY. 

the carriage of one of his great ordnance brake, in mending whereof 
so much time was spent, (and Wyat by no persuasions would go 
forward without it,) that the time was past in which his friends at 
London expected his coming ; which disappointment made many in 
these parts to fall off, and being perceived by those about him, many of 
them also ; so that one-half of his army had suddenly gone and left him ; 
and amongst others, Sir George Harper, the most intimate of all his 
council, went to the queen and discovered all his purposes. Leaving his 
ordnance upon a hill, with the greatest part of his army, after sundry 
fights with the Queen's forces (in which his success so excited Mary 
that she was about to take the command of the troops henelf), Wyat 
reached Ludgate, and was denied entrance ; and, then thinking to retire, 
he heard the Earl of Pembroke with his power was behind at Charing 
Cross ; so that, neither able to go forward nor yet backward, he was at 
a stand and in amazement, and then, leaning a while upon a stall,* by the 
Bell-Sauvage, after a little musing, he returned towards Temple Gate, 
where Clarentius, the herald, meeting him, fell to persuade him to yield. 
The soldiers of Wyat were earnest with him to have stood it out ; but 
Wyat, as sillily ending as he had unadvisedly began, yielded himself to 
Sir Maurice Berkeley, and getting up upon h;s horse behind him, in 
that manner rode to the Court, where he had not the entertainment he 
expected, for without more ado he was presently sent away to the Tower. 
The captain taken, the rest made no resistance, few fled, and of the other 
many were taken and laid in prison. — Baker's Chronicle. 



CHARACTER OF QUEEN MARY. 

Dr. Lingard's defence of Queen Mary will not stand, for a moment, 
the examination of an impartial eye. He would make Mary appear not 
only as the best of women, but as a good sovereign. Sir Frederick 
Madden has collected the best proofs of Mary's possessing some amiable 
qualities, which none but bigots on the other side will attempt to deny ; 
but in removing some prejudices, he seems to contract others, and almost 
to fall in love with his subject. He carries most of his arguments too 
far, relying occasionally on the most doubtful kind of evidence, giving 
at other times an interpretation to words and things which they will 
scarcely bear, and now and then drawing conclusions directly contrary 
to what the premises would justify. We would scarcely attempt to 
defend the prejudices and minor inaccuracies of David Hume, but it 
seems to us that sufficient account is not made of the wonderful quick- 
ness and sagacity of that great writer and most admirable of narrators, 
whose intuitive penetration generally made up for his indolence in ex- 
amining records and original authorities. We seldom take up any 
work relating, in however trifling a part, to the history of our country, 
without finding taunts, or sneers, or louder reproaches, against this first 



* Baker uses the word stall, which means open shop (without glazed windows), 
such as existed to our day ; and a "stall-board " is still part of the carpenter's 
fittings of a shop-window. 



THE LADY ELIZABETH. 149 

of our good historians. Hume, knowing that Mary suffered a wretched 
state of health, and having other evidence to go upon, describes her as 
being of a sour and sullen disposition. This, says Sir Frederick Madden, 
who classes Hume with Buchanan and Carte, as a writer of coarse invec- 
tives, (which Hume never was,) is an inaccuracy notorious to all those 
acquainted with the history of the period ; and to support his opinion, he 
mentions that Mary was once seen to laugh heartily at a tumbler at 
Greenwich — that she kept in her service a female jester, (every King at 
that time kept a fool royal) — that she once had a kennel of hounds ; 
that she was fond of music, played at cards, allowed valentines to be 
drawn in her household, and once lost a breakfast wagered upon a game 
at bowls. But the accuser of Hume's inaccuracy admits, and gives from 
th? plainest spoken Venetian, the broadest account of her malady (that 
Mary, from the age of puberty, had suffered the most distressing of all 
female disorders). Ill-usage and ill-health were not likely to produce the 
best of tempers., But though Sir Frederick Madden may have known 
cheerful and light-hearted valetudinarians, we must question whether 
he ever knew a cheerful bigot. The disorders of her body and of her 
mind must have made Mary what Hume described her to be on her 
accession. In the minutise of the " Privy Purse Expenses," and inci- 
dental occurrences of court holidays, Sir Frederick Madden forgets 
Smithfield, and the fires that blazed in all parts of the kingdom during 
this cheerful reign. 



HOW THE LADY ELIZABETH ESCAPED THE MACHI- 
NATIONS OF BISHOP GARDINER. 

It is memorable what malice Bishop Gardiner bore to the Lady 
Elizabeth, by whose procurement not only was she kept in most hard du- 
rance (at Woodstock), but a warrant was at last framed under certain 
counsellors' hands to put her to death ; but that Mr. Bridges, Lieutenant 
of the Tower, pitying her case, went to the Queen to know her pleasure, 
who utterly denied that she knew anything of it ; by which means her 
life was preserved. Indeed, the Bishop would sometimes say, how they 
cut off boughs and branches, but as long as they let the root remain, 
all was nothing ; and it is not unworthy remembering what trains were t 
laid to ensnare her. The common net at that time for catching Pro- 
testants was the Real Presence, and this was used to catch Elizabeth : # 
for being asked one day what she thought of the words of Christ, this 
is my Body, whether she thought it the true Body of Christ that was 1 
in the Sacrament, it is said that after some pausing she answered thus : — 

Christ was the Word that spake it : 
He took the bread, and brake it : 
And what the Word did make it, 
That I believe, and take it. 

Which though it may seem but a slight expression, yet hath it more 
solidness than at first sight appears ; at least, it served her turn at thai 
time to escape the net, which by direct answer she could not have 
done. — Baker's Chronicle, 



50 FRENCH PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 



THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA. 

This was the famous naval armament, or expedition, sent by Philip 
I. of Spain, against England, in the year 1588. It consisted of 130 
vessels, 2430 great guns, 4575 quintals of powder, nearly 20,000 sol- 
diers, above 8000 sailors, and more than 2000 volunteers. It arrived 
in the English Channel on the 19th of July, and was defeated the next 
day by Lord High Admiral Howard, who was followed by Drake, 
Hawkins, and Frobisher. Eight fireships having been sent into the 
Spanish fleet, they bore off in great disorder. Profiting by the panic 
the English fell upon them, and captured and destroyed a number of 
their ships. Admiral Howard maintained a running fight, from the 
21st of July to the 27th, with such effect that the Spanish commander, 
despairing of success, resolved to return home ; and as escape through 
the English Channel was prevented by contrary winds, he undertook to 
sail round the Orkneys ; but the vessels which still remained to him were 
dispersed by storms, or shipwrecked among the rocks and shallows, on 
different parts of the Scottish and Irish coasts, and upwards of 5000 men 
were drowned, killed, or taken prisoners. Of the whole Armada, 53 ships 
only returned to Spain, and those in a wretched condition. The 
English lost but one ship. This great defeat was commemorated in 
the tapestry hangings which long adorned the old House of Lords, 
destroyed in the great fire of 1834. The tapestry was of Dutch work- 
manship, it having been woven by Francis Spearing, from the designs of 
Vroom, an eminent Dutch painter. It had been bespoke by Admiral 
Lord Howard, and was sold by him to James I. It consisted originally 
of ten compartments, forming separate pictures, each of which was sur- 
rounded by a wrought border, including the portraits of the officers 
who held commands in the English fleet. Engravings from these 
hangings have been made by Pine, with illustrations from charters, 
medals, &c. The Lord High Admiral's remains are deposited in a 
large vault beneath the principal chancel of the church of Reigate, in 
Surrey. 



FRENCH PORTRAIT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

M. Jules Janin has drawn the following severe portrait of Elizabeth: 
" Daughter of a tyrant as odious and as cruel as any in history, and 
of a young, innocent queen, the most touching victim of the terrible 
Henry VIII., the young Elizabeth grew up on the steps of the scaffold 
which was to see so many more victims. As a child, she had the courage 
not to tremble before her father ; she could regard the executioner of 
the most beautiful women and greatest men of the time without blench- 
ing. She was early accustomed to the noise of chains, locks, and the 
axe; and amid all these perils she could still smile. For this innocent 
girl, reserved for such high destiny, the reign of the bloody Mary was 
full of trials and dangers, and when she was fetched from the Tower 
and told that she was Queen, she trembled within herself at the remem- 



SCANDAL AGAINST QUEEN ELIZABETH. 151 



brance of all the murders committed by Mary Tudor. A great day 
then commenced for all Protestant England, which was to live under 
clement laws, and, above all things under an English Queen. She v«s 
twenty-five years of age, in all the eclat of her youth and beauty ; her 
head was evidently well fitted to wear a crown, and her hand to hold 
the golden sceptre. At her first glance she saw the greatest men in 
England prostrate at her feet, and ready to aid her with all their courage, 
their experience, and their virtue. Never did more worthy counsellors 
address ears better fitted to listen to them; and we, children of the 
Salic law, are dazzled, as it were at the sight of so much grandeur 
around a throne occupied by a princess of twenty-five." 



SCANDAL AGAINST QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

From letters to his master of Alvarez de Quadra, Bishop of Aquila, 
Ambassador of Philip II. in London during the first five years of the 
reign of Elizabeth, a man who, says Mr. Froude, would lie to any man 
except his master, Mr. Froude, from studying the archives of Simancas, 
has wrought a tale of which this is the essential part:—" From the day 
of her accession Elizabeth had drawn remarks on herself by the special 
favour which she showed to Lord Robert Dudley, the afterwards no- 
torious Earl of Leicester. Scandal was busy with her name, and be- 
came so loud-voiced that De Quadra was led to inquire curiously 
into her antecedents in such matters. The result was m the mam 
favourable. There were many stories current to her discredit; 
but on the whole, the Ambassador did not believe them. She was 
a wilful woman, he said, and a wicked heretic, but that was the worst 
that could be said of her. Her regard for Dudley, however, was so 
palpable that it was a common subject of remark and censure from 
Protestants as well as Catholics. Hehad a wife, indeed, but the wife 
never appeared a t court; and she was reported to have bad health, which 
report insisted was not altogether natural disease. Dudley himself was 
incautious in his language, and dropped hints from time to time of pros- 
pects which might possibly be before him. % m 

The Queen at last was thought to be so seriously compromising her- 
self that Cecil attempted remonstrance ; and although, when Elizabeth 
made the advance to the Spanish Ambassador about the Archduke, 
Dudley and his sister were the persons through whom she communicated 
her wishes, the Count de Faria wrote that he doubted whether they 
could be trusted to act honestly. Time, however, passed on; the 
Scotch wars drew off public attention ; Amy Robsart did not die ; and 
the scandal was dying away, when one night, in the autumn of 1560, 
Cecil came secretly to De Quadra's house, and told him that allhis 
efforts had been fruitless. The Queen was rushing upon destruction, 
and this time he could not save her. She had made Lord Robert 
D udley " master of the government and of her own person." Dudley s 
wife was about to be murdered, and was at that momeut with difficulty 
" guarding herself against poison." Dead to honour, blind to danger, 



j^2 SCANDAL AGAINST QUEEN ELIZABETH. 

and careless to everything but the gratification of her passion, Elizabeth 
would be contented with nothing less than raising Dudley to the throne, 
and the unhappy Amy Robsart would not be long an obstacle. For 
himself, like a prudent mariner before a storm, he intended to retire 
from the public service. His interference had availed nothing; he 
would now only stand aside and watch the revolution which would be 
the instant inevitable consequence of the Queen's insanity. 

While the Ambassador was cyphering this extraordinary information 
to his master, the news arrived in London that Amy Robsart was ac- 
tually dead. She was staying (as all readers of KeniI<worth know) at 
Cumnor-hall, a place about three miles from Oxford. For what purpose 
she had been placed there no sufficient evidence remains to show ; but 
there she was, and there by accident, as Elizabeth assured De Quadra, 
she fell down a staircase and was killed. A cabinet council was imme- 
diately held. Who were present De Quadra does not say ; but the 
chief actor was still Cecil, in whom indignation for the mome-nt- swept 
away all restraints of policy. It was proposed to dethrone Elizabeth 
and send her at once with D-udley to the Tower. The Protestants 
would be satisfied with the proclamation of the Queen's infamy ; and 
out of the many claimants for the vacant throne some one could be 
found whom the country would agree to accept. Some one ; but who 
was this some one to be ? For many days it was uncertain how the 
balance would turn. Elizabeth probably knew her danger, but durst 
not move to defend herself. Darnley, the nominee of the Catholics, was 
unacceptable to Cecil ; he would be a mere plaything in the hands ot 
the reactionists. Cecil proposed to change the dynasty, to declare the 
Tudors usurpers, and proclaim the Earl of Huntingdon as the represen- 
tative of the House of York; but the Earl of Huntingdon, as a Pro- 
testant, would be rejected by one-half the country, as Darnley would be 
rejected by the other. Philip, too, who would look patiently on Eliza- 
beth's dethronement, would not countenance the substitution of a heretic. 
Many plans were suggested and laid aside ; and among other measures 
taken hastily in the confusion was the secret marriage, supposed to be 
Cecil's work, between Lady Catherine Grey and the Earlof Hertford. 
But after all was said, agreement was found -to be impossible. A civil 
war, a French invasion, and Mary Stuart seemed the certain consequence 
of Elizabeth's deposition ; and if she could be prevented from insulting 
the country by the marriage, it was determined for the present to spare 
her. (Such, at least, seems to have been the resolution, for at this point 
one of De Quadra's letters is missing, and an epitome of it only remains.) 
At any rate there was to be no public disturbance ; and if she was to 
remain on the throne, it was necessary to shield her honour and hush 
up the murder. The same veracious bishop also wrote that first Sir 
Henry Sidney, afterwards Dudley, atterwards Queen Elizabeth herself, 
brought to him offers to marry Philip, and, overthrowing the Reforma- 
tion in England, " re-establish religion." Cecil alone saved the Queen. 
All that De Quadra writes, Mr. Eroude, though he says that " he 
handled falsehood like a master," asks the public to believe. — Times 
journal. 



ELIZABETH AND MARY, 



M3 



darnley's murder, 1567. 

There is a notable gap in the documents at the State Paper Office of 
the time of Darnley's murder. For a month before, and almost a 
month after it, the reports of the English agents at Edinburgh have dis- 
appeared. These had hitherto been constant and copious, with the 
minutest information of everything that went on. The communications 
upon this subject must have been numerous and important ; how much 
so, we can judge from their graphic fulness of detail at the time of 
Rizzio's death. They may have been taken out to form a special col- 
lection ; and, if so, their discovery will some day tell the whole of this 
horrid tale in its naked and minutest particulars. But what if they 
touched some great personage ? Was it Mary ? If so, their loss would 
be accounted for by supposing that James on his succession sought to 
obliterate traces of her guilt. Yet, if they had contained disclosures 
fatal to Mary, would Elizabeth have withheld them when she prompted 
and persuaded Murray and his comrades to charge her with the murder, 
as she undoubtedly did, when Mary was her prisoner in England — or 
during the long years when she wreaked her vengeance on Mary, and 
at last persecuted her to death ? It may be that Elizabeth, in some strange 
fit of returning affection for Mary, might have ordered these papers to 
be destroyed. Or what if they touched herself? That would explain her 
frantic efforts for Morton, her attempt to stir up insurrection, her threats 
of war, her placing an army on the frontier to prevent justice being done 
upon him. — Caird's Mary Stuart. 



ELIZABETH AND MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 

Queen Elizabeth, very shortly after the condemnation of the Scots Queen, 
in the hall of Fotheringhay, attempted to persuade Paulet, her keeper, 
to put her to death privately. Her letter to that person is couched in 
these strange terms: " Amias, my most faithful and careful servant, 
God reward thee treblefold for the most troublesome charge so well 
discharged. If you knew, my Amias, how kindly, beside most duti- 
fully, my grateful heart accepts and praises your spotless endeavours and 
faithful actions, performed in so dangerous and crafty a charge, it 
would ease your travail and rejoice your heart ; in which I charge you 
to carry this most instant thought, that I cannot balance in any weight 
of my judgment the value that I prize you at, and suppose no treasure 
can countervail snch a faith. And you shall condemn me in that fault 
that yet I never committed, if I reward not such desert ; yea, let me 
lack when I most need it, if I acknowledge such a merit, non omnibus 
datum." 

She dares not name the crime she is wooing her faithful servant to 
commit. The vague language which Shakspeare puts into the mouth 
of King John, when persuading Hubert to murder his nephew, bears a 
singular resemblance to this letter: 



1^4 CHARACTER OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 

O my gentle Hubert, 
We owe thee much ! Within this wall of flesh 
There is a soul counts thee a creditor, 
And with advantage means to pay thy love ; 
And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath 
Lives in this bosom dearly cherished. 

Paulet, a determined enemy of Mary, but an honest man, refused to 
take the hint, upon which Walsingham explained the meaning of the 
Queen somewhat sharply. " We find," he says, in a letter to Paulet, 
" by a speech lately made by her Majesty, that she doth note in you 
both a lack of that care and zeal for her service that she looketh for at 
your hands, in that you have not in all this time, found out some way 
to shorten the life of the Scots Queen, considering the great peril she is 
hourly subject to, so long as the said queen shall live." — Tytler, vol. ii. 

P- 3 J 9- 

The final reply which Paulet returned to these nefarious proposals, 
must have proved a severe rebuke to Elizabeth's haughty spirit : — " Your 
letter of yesterday," he writes to Walsingham, " coming to my hand 
this day, I would not fail, according to your directions, to return my 
answer with all speed, which I shall deliver unto you with great grief 
and bitterness of mind, in that I am so unhappy as living to see this 
unhappy day, in which I am required, by direction of my most gracious 
sovereign, to do an act which God and the law forbiddeth. My goods 
and life are at her Majesty's disposition, and I am ready to lose them the 
next morrow if it shall please her. But God forbid I should make so 
foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave so great a blot to my poor 
posterity, as shed blood without law or warrant." 



CHARACTER OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 

No historical personage of the sixteenth century, much as that age 
abounds in illustrious names, has acquired a greater celebrity than Mary 
Stuart. The mother of our present race of kings, the most beautiful 
woman of her age, and the most unfortunate, it is not to be wondered 
at that the poets and painters, as well as the historians and philosophers 
of all countries, have rendered homage to the memory of this unhappy 
princess, by investing her with a degree of interest greater than that 
which we attach to any female name of modern annals. 

Mr. Froude, in his valuable History of England, is the latest investi- 
gator of the history of Mary, and as the result of long studies among 
forgotten archives, he has thrown a flood of light on the subject. His 
extracts from the Simancas papers, and many of his citations from the 
Hatfield collection, have been made for the first time, and prove of 
great importance and interest; though it must be added that Mr. 
Froude takes the most unfavourable view of Mary Stuart's history. 
An able critic in the Churchman thus estimates this portion of it : — 

" There are only two views which can be entertained of Mary Stuart's 
character. Either she was the most curiously and extraordinarily 
unfortunate woman who ever lived, or she was a foul adulteress and 



CHARACTER OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 155 

murderess, who lured her husband to his death with circumstances of 
peculiar treachery and baseness. Mr. Froude has convinced us that the 
latter view is the true one. We sat down to the perusal of his volumes 
with an unprejudiced mind. We gave careful attention to all the points 
of the evidence. We compared his account with that of other histo- 
rians, both favourable to Mary and adverse to her, and we rose with all 
doubts removed. The broad facts of the case point unquestionably to 
the worst conclusion. Nor can it well be denied that if Mary had been 
old and ugly, and had died in her bed, probably not a single voice would 
have been raised in her defence. The evidence against her is infinitely 
stronger than that which convicts John of the murder of Arthur, or 
Richard III. of the murder of his nephews. But it may well be replied 
that this is no reason against allowing their full weight to the arguments 
in her favour : there may be many who have been condemned by the 
verdict of history because no one has cared to undertake their defence. 

" Her beauty, her misfortunes, the injuries which she received at the 
hands of her rival, and her early and tragical death, have thrown a halo 
of romance around her name which has raised up, and probably will 
always raise up, defenders of her innocence. But they have been per- 
sons led by the heart and not by the head. With the exception of Miss 
Strickland, there has been little difference of opinion among historians as 
to her guilt. Lingard, Roman Catholic as he was, though he says what 
he can in her defence, does not venture directly to assert her innocence ; 
and his statement of the facts does not differ materially from that of 
Mr. Froude. Even Walter Scott, with all his romantic sympathies and 
Stuart predilections, leans to the supposition of her guilt. If any doubt 
remained upon the point, Mr. Froude has, in our opinion, removed it. 
That many will still adhere to their former belief, we doubt not. For 
ourselves we can only say that if Mary Stuart was innocent, no conclu- 
sion of history can be considered worthy of reliance." 

It is curious to observe what pleasure the conscientious historian takes 
in presenting us, with a difference, some of the scenes of Scott's 
romance. Here is Mr. Froude's sketch of Lochleven and its castle, the 
scene of Mary's imprisonment : 

" The castle consisted of the ordinary Scotch tower, a strong stone 
structure five and twenty feet square, carried up for three or four 
storeys. It formed one corner of a large court from 90 to 100 feet 
across. The basement storey was a flagged hall which served at the 
same time for kitchen and guardroom. The two or three rooms above 
it may have been set apart for the lord and lady and their female ser- 
vants. .... In the angle opposite the castle was a round turret, 
entered, like the main building, from the court ; within it was something 
like an ordinary limekiln from seven to eight feet in diameter. This 
again was divided into three rooms, one above the other, the height of 
each may have been six feet Here it was, in the three apart- 
ments, that the Queen of Scotland passed the long months of her 
imprisonment. Decency must have been difficult in such a place, and 
cleanliness impossible. She had happily a tough, healthy nature, which 
cared little for minor comforts." 



156 SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 

Mary was elsewhere meanly lodged, as at Worksop— the house huge, 
and one of the magnificent works of old Bess of Hardwicke, who 
guarded the Queen of Scots here for some time in a wretched little 
bedchamber within her own lofty one. 

Again, what a drawback on beaux sentiments and romantic ideas is 
presented in Pasquier's account of the execution of the Queen of Scots. 
He says: "The night before, knowing her body must be stripped for 
her shroud, she would have her feet washed, because she used ointment 
to one of them, which was sore." In a very old trial of Mary, which 
Walpole bought from Lord Oxford's collections, it is said that " she 
was a large lame woman." Take sentiments out of their pantoufles, and 
reduce them to the infirmities of mortality, and what a falling off is 
there! 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH IN THE TOWER. 

Raleigh was first imprisoned in the Tower in 1592 (eight weeks) for 
winning the heart of Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of Queen Elizabeth's 
maids of honour, "not only a moral sin, but in those days a heinous 
political offence." Raleigh's next imprisonment was in 1603: after 
being first confined in his own house, he was conveyed to the Tower, 
next sent to Winchester gaol, returned from thence to the Tower, 
imprisoned for between two and three months in the Fleet, and again 
removed to the Tower, where he remained until his release, thirteen 
years afterwards, to undertake his new Expedition to Guiana. Mr. 
Payne Collier possesses a copy of that rare tract, A Good Speed to 
Virginia, 4to, 1609, with the autograph on the title-page, " W. Ralegh, 
Turr. Lond.," showing that at the time this tract was published Raleigh 
recorded himself as a prisoner in the Tower of London. During part 
of the time, Lady Raleigh resided with her husband ; and here, in 
1605, was born Carew, their second son. After she had been forbidden 
to lodge with her husband in the Tower, Lady Raleigh lived on Tower 
Hill. In his prison-lodging (believed to have been in the Bloody 
Tower), Sir Walter wrote his political discourses, and commenced his 
famous History of the World, which he published in 1614. Raleigh 
wrote his History avowedly for his patron, Prince Henry of Wales, the 
heir- apparent to the throne ; upon whose death Sir Walter is stated to 
have burnt the continuation of the work, which he had written. 
Twelve years of his imprisonment were passed in the Bloody Tower, 
whither Prince Henry came to visit him ; Ben Jonson and the poets 
also here conversed with Raleigh. Here he began a treatise on the art 
of conducting war by sea ; made a new model of a ship ; and invented 
his " Rare Cordial." He converted a little henhouse in the garden into 
a still-house, and spent whole days in distillations. It was here that in 
the frenzy of despair, Raleigh attempted to stab himself to the heart, 
after he had written to his wife the touching and pathetic letter pre- 
served in All Souls' College, Oxford. Raleigh was also imprisoned in 
the Beauchamp Tower and the White Tower. 



TWO TIPPLING KINGS. 157 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH ON THE SCAFFOLD. 

The scaffold having been erected near dwelling-houses in Old Palace 
Yard, Westminster, Raleigh observed when he ascended it several noble- 
blemen and gentlemen, who had stationed themselves at a window of Sir 
Randal Crew's to witness his death, and because his voice was weak, he 
requested them to come out and stand on the scaffold, as he had some- 
thing to say to them. When they had done as he desired, he made a 
short speech, the meaning of which has scarcely been preserved. What 
we possess under that name it is impossible he should have uttered, unless 
we assume the letter to James of the 5th of October, together with his 
examination and those of La Chene, and all his communications with 
the French authorities, to be forgeries. Had he denied, as he is said to 
have done, that he ever saw any commission, letter, or seal, from the 
French king, his admission to the contrary, in his own handwriting, 
would doubtless have been produced on the scaffold to confound and 
silence him. We must, consequently, be ieve either that the documents 
referred to were mere fabrications, or that several gentlemen who were 
present at his death, and heard him deliver his farewell address to the 
world, either misunderstood his language or purposely misrepresented it. 
The reference he made to Essex's death, may have imported no more 
than this, that he never spontaneously sought his destruction, though the 
earl had fallen by the means he had been constrained to employ to pre- 
serve himself against his machinations. 

We quote the above from the Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, by J. A. 
St. John, who among other new light, shows the probability of Raleigh 
having sailed to the West Indies in 1578, sixteen years earlier than he is 
otherwise known to have visited that part of the world. 



TWO TIPPLING KINGS. 

In 1608, when Christian IV. of Denmark, brother of the Queen of 
James I., came to England to visit him, both the kings got drunk together 
to celebrate the meeting. Sir John Harrington, the wit, has left a 
most amusing account of this Court revel and carousal. He tells us 
that " the sports began each day in such manner and such sorte, as well 
nigh persuaded me of Mahomet's paradise. We had women, andindeed 
wine too, of such plenty, as would have astonished each beholder. Our 
feasts were magnificent, and the two royal guests did most lovingly em- 
brace each other at table. I think the Dane hath strangely wrought on 
our good English nobles ; for those whom I could never get to taste good 
liquor, now follow the fashion, and wallow in beastly delights. The 
ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxi- 
cation. In good sooth, the Parliament did kindly to provide his majestie 
so seasonably with money, for there have been no lack of good livinge, 
shews, sights, and banquetings from morn to eve. 

" One day a great feast was held, and after dinner the representation of 
Solomon his temple, and the coming of the Queen of Sheba was made, 



r^8 MYSTERIOUS ROYAL DEATHS. 

or (as I may better say) was meant to have been made, before their 
majesties, by the device of the Earl of Salisbury and others. But alas ! 
as all earthly things do fail to poor mortals in enjoyment, so did prove 
our presentment thereof. The lady who did play the Queen's part did 
carry most precious gifts to both their majesties; but forgetting the 
steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets in his Danish Majesty's 
lap, and fell at his feet, though I think it was rather in his face. Much 
was the hurry and contusion ; cloths and napkins were at hand to make 
all clean. His Majestie then got up, and would dance with the Queen 
of Sheba ; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was 
carried to an inner chamber, and laid on a bed of state, which was not a 
little defiled with the presents of the Queen, which had been bestowed 
on his garments ; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and 
other good matters. The entertainment and show went forward, and 
most of the presenters went backward or fell down ; wine did so occupy 
their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and 
Charity. Hope did essay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours so 
feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the King would excuse her brevity. 
Faith was then all alone, for I am certain she was not joyned to good 
works, and left the court in a staggering condition. Charity came to 
the King's feet, and seemed to cover the multitude of sins her sisters had 
committed ; in some sorte she made obeysance, and brought giftes, but 
said she would return home again, as there was no gift which heaven 
had not already given his Majesty. She then returned to Hope and 
Faith, who were both sick .... in the lower hall. Next came Victory, 
in bright armour, and presented a rich sword to the King, who did not 
accept it, but put it by with his hand ; and by a strange medley of versi- 
fication did endeavour to make suit to the King. But Victory did not 
triumph long ; for, after much lamentable utterance, she was led away 
like a silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the ante-chamber. 
Now did Peace make entry, and strive to get foremost to the King ; but 
I grieve to tell how great wrath she did discover unto those of her 
attendants; and much contrary to her semblance, made rudely war 
with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose 
her coming." * 



MYSTERIOUS ROYAL DEATHS. 

It has been asserted that Henry, Prince of Wales, eldest son of 
James I., was poisoned, and that the king was privy to the act. James 
did not manifest any great sorrow at the event ; but it does not appear 
that he was in any way accessory to Henry's death, or that he had been 
unfairly dealt with by any person. The medical treatment might have 
been unskilful, but the post mortem examination of the body, to be found 



* Nu$ce Antiques, ed. 1804, vol. i., quoted in a note to Peyton's Catastrophe 
of the Stuarts, in the Secret History of the Court of James I., vol. ii. 



MYSTERIOUS ROYAL DEATHS. 159 

in the Desiderata Curiosa, and signed by all the medical attendants, 
renders it obvious that natural causes occasioned the death of that most 
promising young man ; so, we do not perceive that there were any 
secrets to disclose. Yet, it is stated that at the trial of Carr, Earl of 
Somerset, Mrs. Turner, and others, for the poisoning of Sir Thomas 
Overbury, James was so fearful of the Earl's speaking of that circum- 
stance, that two persons were provided to stand behind him with a cloak, 
and the moment he should utter anything reflecting on the king, he was 
to have been muffled therein, and hurried away ; and though James 
most solemnly vowed to show no favour to any person that should be 
found guilty of Overbury's death, yet, on the conviction of the Earl 
and his Lady, he was pleased to grant them a lease of their lives for 
ninety-nine years. Had James been in any way accessory to the Prince's 
death, he would seem to have experienced the law of retaliation in a 
singular manner. 

In a poem of the day, entitled, "The Duke Return'd Againe," 
1627, occur these lines : — 

Or didst thou hasten headlong, to prevent 
A fruitlesse hope for needfull parliament ? 
All these, noe question, with a restlesse motion 
Vext thy bespotted soule ; as did thy potion 
Torture the noble Scott ; whose manes tell 
Thy swolne ambition made his carcase swell. 

The latter is an allusion to the imputed poisoningof King James I., by 
the Duke's means ; an assertion which we shall find frequently enforced 
by the satirists of the day. It was broadly charged to the Duke by one of 
King James's physicians, Dr. George Eglisham, as well as the poisoning 
of the Marquis of Hamilton, in a pamphlet called the Forerunner of 
Revenge, and couched in the language of a petition to King Charles I. 
for justice on the Duke. A curious engraving is in existence, depicting 
this so-called poisoning scene in the King's bedchamber. The enemies 
of Buckingham and his family, and they were many, of course spread 
the foul tale, which was popularly credited ; but the truth seems to be, 
that he and his mother administered a poisoned plaster and a posset of 
the Duke's preparation. The physicians who opened the body reported 
the intestines to have been very much discoloured, and his body ex- 
tremely distorted. And in the charge to Sir John Eliot was " The ap- 
plying of a plaister and giving of a drinke to King James in his last 
sicknesse, without making any of the King's sworne doctors and apothe- 
caries acquainted therewithall, and contrary to their directions in general 
and particular." 

In the print the King is represented in bed, one of the attendant 
figures is uttering " Thanks to the chymist," and another, Dr. Lambe, is 
standing by the bed, holding a bottle, and saying " I'll warrant you ;" 
the portrait very much resembling that of Lambe published by Mr. 
Thane. 



160 AGES OF ELIZABETH AATD CHARLES I. 



AN HISTORIC HOUSE IN FLEET-STREET. 

One of the few remaining specimens of olden street architecture ex- 
isting in the metropolis is the house No. 17, Fleet Street, facing Chancery- 
Lane. In the lower portion of the house is the gateway to Inner 
Temple Lane, of plain Jacobean design, with a semicircular arch, and 
the Pegasus in the spandrils, This house was built in 1609, and was 
not, as inscribed, " Formerly the Palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal 
Wolsey." Thither was removed in 1795, Mrs. Salmon's Waxwork 
Collection, celebrated before its commemoration in the Spectator, No. 28. 
Mrs. Salmon, in her advertisements, styled this house " once the Palace 
of Henry, Prince of Wales, son of King James I.," and so it was con- 
sidered until the tenant who succeeded Mrs. Salmon gave the house its 
present inscription. The first-floor front-room has an enriched plaster 
ceiling, inscribed P. (triple plume) H., which, with part of the carved 
wainscoting, denote the building to be of the time of James I. Still, 
we do not find in the lives of Prince Henry any indication of this house 
as a royal palace. It appears that though never the residence of Prince 
Henry, it was the office in which the Council for the Management of 
the Duchy of Cornwall Estates held their sittings, in his time ; and in 
the Calendar of State Papers, edited by Mrs. Green, we find entries 
dated from the Council-Chamber, in Fleet Street. The interior of the 
House is in the style of Inigo Jones, whose first office was Surveyor of 
the Works to Henry, Prince of Wales until the year 161 3. — Curiosities 
of London, new edit., 1868. 

It is curious to find the inscription upon this house altered from 
Mrs. Salmon's designation in 1795, which, though not correct, was 
nearer the truth than that ascribing it to Henry VIII. and Wolsey. 
In Hughson's Walks through London, 181 7, we find, "The range of 
houses near and over the Inner Temple Gate, are of the architecture of 
James I., as is evident from the plume of feathers over the house to the 
east of the gate, intended as a compliment to Henry Prince of Wales, 
then the object of popular favour. The gate itself was erected in 161 1, 
at the expense of John Benet, Esq., King's Serjeant." It may be men- 
tioned that the former gate of the Middle Temple was erected as a fine 
imposed by Wolsey, which may have led to the Wolseyan celebrity 
wrongly attached to the house adjoining the Inner Temple Gate. 



THE AGES OF ELIZABETH AND CHARLES I. 

The difference between the state of mind in the reign of Elizabeth 
and in that of Charles I. is astonishing. In the former period there was 
an amazing development of power, but all connected with prudential 
purposes — an attempt to reconcile the moral feeling with the full exer- 
cise of the powers of the mind, and the accomplishment of certain 
practical ends. Thus lived Bacon, Burghley, Sir W. Raleigh, Sir Philip 



QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA. id 

Sidney, and a galaxy of great men, statesmen, lawyers, politicians, phi- 
losophers, and poets ; and it is lamentable that they should have degraded 
their mighty powers to such base designs and purposes, dissolving the 
rich pearls of their great faculties in a worthless acid, to be drunken by 
a harlot. What was seeking the favour of a Queen, to a man like 
Bacon, but the mere courtship of harlotry ? Compare this age with that 
of the Republicans ; that indeed was an awful age, as compared with 
. our own. England may be said to have then overflowed from the ful- 
ness of grand principle, from the greatness which men felt in themselves, 
abstracted from the prudence with which they ought to have considered 
whether their principles were, or were not, adapted to the condition of 
mankind at large. Compare the revolution then effected with that of a 
day not long past, when the bubbling up and overflowing was occa- 
sioned by the elevation of the dregs — when there was a total absence of 
all principle, when the dregs had risen from the bottom to the top, and, 
thus converted into scum, founded a monarchy, to be the poisonous 
bane and misery of the rest of mankind. It is absolutely necessary to 
recollect that the age in which Shakspeare lived was one of great abilities, 
applied to individual and prudential purposes, and not an age of high 
moral feeling and lofty principle, which gives a man of genius the power 
of thinking of all things in reference to all. If, then, we should find 
that Shakspeare took these materials as they were presented to him, and 
yet to all effectual purposes produced the same grand result as others 
attempted to produce in an age so much more favourable, shall we not 
feel and acknowledge the purity and holiness of genius — a light which, 
however it might shine on a dunghill, was as pure as the divine influence 
which created all the beauty of nature ? — Coleridge's Lectures on Shak- 
speare and Milton. 



QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA, AND HER REPUTED 
PENANCE TO TYBURN. 

Howell, in one of his letters, dated " London, 16th May, 1626," thus 
describes this beautiful and accomplished princess : — " We have now a 
most noble new Queen of England, who in true beauty, is much be- 
yond the long-woo'd infanta. The daughter of France — this youngest 
branch of Bourbon, is of a more lovely and lasting complexion, a dark 
brown ; she hath eyes that sparkle like stars ; and for her physiognomy, 
she may be said to be a mirror of perfection. She had a rough passage 
in her transfretation to Dover Castle; and in Canterbury the king bedded 
first with her. There were a goodly number of choice ladies attended 
her coming upon the bowling green, at Barham Downs, upon the way, 
who divided themselves into two rows, and they appeared like so many 
constellations; but methought the country ladies outshined the courtiers. 

" The Queen brought over with her two hundred thousand crowns in 
gold and silver, as half her portion, and the other moiety is to be paid at 
the year's end. Her first suite of servants (by article) are to be French ; 
and as they die, English are to succeed. She is allowed twenty-eight 

M 



1 62 QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA. 

ecclesiastics, of any order except Jesuits ; a bishop for her almoner ; and 
to have private exercise of her religion for herself, and for her servants. 

There is another disputed event in the life of the Queen which 
deserves to be sifted. Sir William Waller asserts in his Recollections, 
p. 122, that the Queen's confessor once compelled her to walk in 
penance to Tyburn, " some say barefoot," seemingly for some kindness 
towards heretics. This Tyburn penance is, however, discredited. The 
story is conjectured to have originated with Buckingham himself, for a 
notable quarrel broke out between the Queen and him while this matter 
was discussed in council. It is evident that Charles I. believed the 
story; for, writing to his ambassador in France on July 12, 1626, he 
says : " I can no longer suffer those that I know to be about my wife 
any longer, which I must do if it were but for one action they made my 
wife do ; which is to make her go to Tyburn in devotion to pray, 
which action can have no greater invective made against it than the 
relation." — Appendix to Ludlow's Memoirs, edit. 1771, p. 511. 

The story was also credited by the King's ministers, for in the " Reply 
of the Commissioners of his Majesty the King of Great Britain to the 
proposition presented by M. le Mareschal de Bassompierre, Ambassador 
Extraordinary to his Most Christian Majesty," it is stated that the Bishop 
of Mande and his priests " abused the influence which they had acquired 
over the tender and religious mind of her Majesty, so far as to lead her 
a long way on foot through a park the gates of which had been expressly 
ordered by the Count de Villiers to be kept open, to go in devotion to 
a place (Tyburn), where it has been the custom to execute the most 
infamous malefactors and criminals of all sorts, exposed on the entrance 
of a high road ; an act not only of shame and mockery towards the Queen, 
but of reproach and calumny of the King's predecessors of glorious 
memory, as accusing them of tyranny in having put to death innocent 
persons, whom these people look upon as martyrs ; although, on the 
contrary, not one of them had been executed on account of religion, 
but for high treason. And it was this last act, above all, which pro- 
voked the royal resentment and anger of his Majesty beyond the bounds 
of his patience, which, until then, had enabled him to support all the 
rest ; but he could now no longer endure to see in his house and in his 
kingdom people who, in the person of his dearly beloved consort, had 
brought such scandal upon 'his religion." — Memoirs of the Embassy of 
the Marshal de Bassompierre, Appendix, p. 138. 

It appears, however, that the Queen herself earnestly denied this Tyburn 
story, and instructed Bassompierre to state to the King's council that "the 
Queen of Great Britain, by permission of the King, her consort, graced 
the jubilee at the Chapel of the Peres de l'Oratoire, at St. James's, 
with the devotion suitable to a great princess, so well born, and so 
jealous of her religion, which devotions terminated with vespers ; and 
sometime after, the heat of the day being passed, she walked in the 
park of St. James's, and in the Hyde Park, which joins it — a walk she 
had often taken with the King, her husband ; but that she made it in 
procession, or that she ever approached within fifty paces of the gallows, 
or that she made there any prayers, public or private, or that she went 



TYBURN PENANCE. 



on hez knees there, holding the crown or chaplets in her hands, is what 
those who impose these matters on others do not believe themselves." 
This is quoted from Bassompierre's Memoirs, p. 146, the editor of which 
(the late John Wilson Croker,) justly remarks, " It really requires the 
concurrent testimony of all writers to make us believe that the Oueen 
of England was forced by those meddling priests to walk in procession 
to Tyburn, and there, on her knees, under the gibbet, glorify the blessed 
martyrs of the Gunpowder Plot." 

Disraeli in his Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles L, vol. 
i. p. 202, edit. 1851, speaking of the "penances and mortifications" 
inflicted upon the Queen, says: "But the most notorious was her 
Majesty's pilgrimage to Tyburn, to pray under the gallows of those 
Jesuits who, executed as traitors to Elizabeth and James, were by the 
Catholics held as martyrs of faith. This incident Bassompierre, in the 
style of the true French Gasconade, declared that those who formed 
the accusation did not themselves believe it. The fact, however, seems 
doubtful ; I find it confirmed by private accounts of the time, and 
afterwards sanctioned by a state paper." But D 'Israeli does not give 
us any reference to the " private accounts of the time." 

The following allusion to the incident occurs in a sermon preached 
in Westminster Abbey before the House of Peers, on the 24th of 
September, 1645, by William Gouge, one of the Members of the 
Assembly: "Others they either enjoyn or persuade to whip their 
naked backs with scourges of cords, wyers, and sharp rundalls till the 
bloud run down. .... Others must lie in shirts of haircloth. Others 
go barefoot and barelegged to such and such shrines. Others undertake 
long pilgrimages to remote lands ; nay, they stick not to send a Queen to 
Tyburn upon penance •" 

In one of Ellis's Original Letters, first series, vol. iii. p. 241-2, from 
the Harl. MSS. 383, we read : " No longer agon then upon St. James 
his day last, those hypocritical dogges made the pore Queen to walke 
a foot (some add barefoot,) from her house at St. James's to the 
gallowes at Tyborne, thereby to honour the saint of the day in visiting 
that holy place, where so many martyrs (forsooth !) had shed then- 
blood in defence of the Catholic cause. Had they not also made her to 
dable in the dirt in a foul morning, from Somereett House to St. James's, 
her Luciferian Confessor riding along by her in his coach. Yea, they 
made her to go barefoot, to spin, to eat her meat out of tryne (treen or 
wooden) dishes, to wait at table and serve her servants, with many 

other ridiculous and absurd penances It is hoped, after they 

are gone^ the Queen will, by degrees, find the sweetness of liberty in 
being exempt from those beggarly rudiments of Popish penance." 

In the King's Cabinet Opened there is a copy of instructions given by 
Charles I. to Dudley Carleton, sent in 1626, on an embassy to France 
to explain the reason for the dismissal of the Queen's French attendants. 
Charles justified the dismissal as an act "wnich," he says, "I must 
doe if it were but for one action they made my wife doe, which is, to 
make her go to Tiburn in devotion, to pray, which action can have no 
greater invective made against it than the relation." 

M 2 



164 QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA. 

In the Croiv/e Pennant, in the British Museum, is a German print 
representing the Queen kneeling in penance, the chaplets in her hands. 
and praying beneath the triple tree, this being the oldest existing repre- 
sentation in existence of the Tyburn gallows. It is moonlight, and the 
confessor is seated in the coach, which is drawn by six horses ; at the 
coach-door is a servant bearing a torch. The print is of later date than 
the year of the reputed penance, 1628 ; but it is considered by print- 
collectors as untrustworthy as the story itself. 

The ill-behaviour of the French that the Queen brought over with 
her, occasioned Charles the First to write the following letters to the 
Duke of Buckingham, which are copied from the originals in the 
British Museum : — 

" Steenie, — I write to you by Ned Clarke, that I thought I would 
here cause enufe in short tyme to put away the Monsers (his wife's 
French servants and dependants), either by attempting to steal away 
my wife, or by making plots amongst my own subjects. I cannot say 
certainlie whether it was intended, but I am sure it is hindered. For 
the other, though I have good grounds to belife it, and am still hunting- 
after it, yet seeing dailie the Malitiousness of the Monsers, by making 
and fomenting discontents in my wyfe, I could tarie no longer from 
adverticing of you, that I mean to seek of no other grounds to easier 
(cashier) my Monsers, having for this purpose sent you this other letter, 
that you may if you think good advertise the queene (Mary of Medicis! 
widow of Henry the Fourth,) mother with my intention. 
" So I rest, 

" Your faithful constant loving friende, 

"Charles R" 

" Steenie,— I have received your letter by Die Greme : this is my 
answer— I command you to send all the French away to-morrow, out 
of the town, if you can by fayre means (but stike not long in disput- 
ing), otherwise force them away lyke so many wyld beastes, until ye 
have shipped them, and so the devil goe with them. Lett me hear no 
answer, but of the performance of my command. 
" So I rest, 

" Your faithfull constant loving friende, 

"Charles R. 
" Oaking, the 7th of August, 1626. 
(Superscribed) " The Duke of Buckingham." 

Howell, in a letter dated March 15, 1626, says :— "The French that 
came over with her Majesty, for their petulancies and some misde- 
meanors, and imposing some odd penances upon the Queen, are all 
cashiered this week. It was a thing suddenly done ; for about one of 
the clock, as they were at dinner, my Lord Conway and Sir Thomas 
Edmondes, came with an order from the King, that they must instantly 
away to Somerset House, for there were barges and coaches staying for 
them, and there they should have all their wages paid them to a penny, 
and so they must be content to quit the kingdom. This sudden' 



« THE SADDLE LETTER:' 165 

undreamed-of order struck an astonishment into them all, both men and 
women ; and running to complain to the Queen, his Majesty had taken 
her beforehand into his bedchamber, and locked the door upon them 
till he had told her how matters stood. The Queen fell into a violent 
passion, broke the glass window, and tore her hair, but she was cooled 
afterwards. Just such a destiny happened in France some years since 
to the Queen's Spanish servants there, who were all dismissed in like 
manner for some miscarriages. The like was done in Spain to the 
French, therefore 'tis no new thing." 



"THE SADDLE LETTER" AND CHARLES I. 

The long-known George and Blue Boar Inn, Holborn, which was 
taken down in 1864, for the site of the Inns of Court Hotel, is associated 
with a legendary tale, according to which here was intercepted a 
letter of Charles I., by which Ireton discovered it to be the King's in- 
tention to destroy him and Cromwell, which discovery brought about 
Charles's execution. In the Earl of Orrery's Letters we read : " While 
Cromwell was meditating how he could best ' come in : with Charles, 
one of his spies — of the King's bedchamber — informed him that his 
final doom was decreed, and that what it was might be found out by in- 
tercepting a letter sent from the King to the Queen (Henrietta Maria), 
wherein he declared what he would do. The letter, he said, was sewed 
up in the skirt of a saddle, and the bearer of it would come with the 
saddle upon his head, that night, to the Blue Boar Inn, in Holborn ; for 
there he was to take horse and go to Dover with it. This messenger 
knew nothing of the letter in the saddle; but some persons at Dover did. 
Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as troopers, taking with them a trusty 
fellow, went to the Inn in Holborn ; and this man watched at the wicket, 
and the troopers continued drinking beer till about ten o'clock, when the 
sentinel at the gate gave notice that the man with the saddle was come in. 
Up they got, and, as the man was leading out his horse saddled, they, 
with drawn swords, declared that they were to search all who went in 
and out there ; but, as he looked like an honest man, they would only 
search his saddle. Upon this they ungirt the saddle and carried it into 
the stall where they had been drinking, and left the horseman with the 
sentinel ; then, ripping up one of the skirts of the saddle, they found 
the letter, and gave back the saddle to the man, who, not knowing what 
he had done, went away to Dover. They then opened the letter, in 
which the King told the Queen that he thought he should close with 
the Scots. Cromwell and Ireton then took horse and went to Windsor ; 
and, finding they were not likely to have any tolerable terms with the 
King, they immediately from that time forward resolved his ruin."* 



* For some notice of this veritable historical hoax of ' ' The Saddle Letter, ' 
see D'Israeli, Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Cha?les the First, v. 323. 
See also the Ge?itlemari s Magazine, xxii. 204. Notes and Queries, 3rd series, 
iv. 410 — 7. 



166 THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE. 



CHARLES THE FIRST AND HIS PARLIAMENT, 1641. 

The importance of the Grand Remonstrance has not been adequately 
acknowledged by the ordinary historians of the Long Parliament. After 
the impeachment against Strafford had been carried, the Parliament 
found themselves in considerable danger from the lukewarmness and de- 
sertions which are almost always the consequences of success. A re- 
action set in against them, which in its consequences might have been 
most dangerous. They had to dread, on the one side, the effect of the 
ad captandum measures which Hyde was urging the King to bring for- 
ward, and on the other the employment of open force to disperse them 
— a possibility which was by no means too remote to cause anxious con- 
sideration. Under these circumstances, they resolved to embody in a 
document, to be published to all the world, their account of the 
grievances under which they had found the nation labouring, and of the 
steps which they had taken to redress them. " Declaration and Re- 
monstrance " intended to effect this purpose was first submitted for dis- 
cussion on the 8th of November, and the debates, on it continued with 
little intermission till the 15th of December. 

The Remonstrance consisted of no less than 206 articles. The 
great debate of all took place on the 22nd of November. The House 
met at ten in the morning, and the debate continued without in- 
termission till one on the following morning. According to Claren- 
don, the members in favour of the Remonstrance " said very little, 
nor answered any reasons that were alleged to the contrary, but 
still called for the question, presuming their number if not their 
reason would serve to carry it, and after two o'clock of the morn- 
ing, when many had gone home," &c. It now appears that Sir Ben- 
jamin Rudyard, Pym, and Hampden, all spoke in favour of it, as well 
as Denzil Holies, and Serjeant Glyn, and that hardly any one went home, 
inasmuch as 307 members voted on the great division, whilst only 308 
and 310 voted on preceding ones on minor points. After the Remon- 
strance was carried, it was moved that it should beprinted^and this ex- 
cited a debate of a still more violent character than the motion that it 
should pass. It ended in the most extraordinary scene that ever occurred 
in Parliament. Several of the members that were in the king's interest, 
in pursuance of what is now proved, by a letter from Secretary Nicholas 
to the King, to have been a set design, claimed a right to protest against 
the vote of. the House ; and thereupon Mr. Geoffrey Palmer, who at the 
Restoration became Attorney- General, in the excitement of the moment 
declared that he did " protest for himself and all the rest." The mem- 
bers of his party thereupon broke into the wildest excitement. " All I 
all!" says D'Ewes, '•' was cried from side to side, and some waved 
their hats over their heads, and others took their swords in the scabbards 
out of their belts, and held them by the pummels in their hands, setting 
the lower part on the ground, so as, if God had not prevented it, there 
was very great danger that mischief might have been done." With 
great tact Hampden interfered, by asking Palmer how he could answer 



MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES L 167 

for those (of whom there might be many) who disapproved of the 
printing, but approved of the Remonstrance ? His reply to the question 
gave time for the House to collect itself a little, and it adjourned at two 
in the morning, after deferring the question of the printing till another 
occasion. It is very curious to contrast this, the very extreme of violence 
into which the House of Commons was ever hurried, with the scenes 
which so frequently and so deeply disgraced the sittings of the various 
representative Assemblies of France. — {Saturday Review.) The attempted 
Arrest of the Five Members of the House of Commons followed on the 
4th of January, 164 1-2, and then began our Great Civil War. 



MARTYRDOM OF KING CHARLES I. 

This " Anniversary " of English history is one of the darkest, the 
deepest, and most impressive of any age or time ; the death of Charles 
the First has a monumental record in our metropolis, and more than a 
monumental record in the heart of posterity and the memories of read- 
ing men. There are few subjects in English history — isolated by their 
peculiar beauty and absorbing interest, from all meaner incidents — more 
noble in spirit, more touching in remembrance, more forcible in impres- 
sion, and more absolutely appealing by their character to the imagination, 
and very soul of the painter, than this of the last moments of the fated 
Monarch. The associations which crowd themselves into the memory 
with the characters which form the grouping of the scene — the recol- 
lection of events which immediately preceded it in the awful drama of 
the times — the shadows of a dark history passing in pageantry before 
the mind, with strange contrasted forms of rebellion and fidelity, of 
courage and cowardice, of virtue and treachery, of piety and blasphemy, 
of grace, loveliness, affection, with selfishness, ferocity, and ambition 1 
all the bad and good elements of humanity, in short, brought strikingly 
into play — these thoughts and memories, blending with the full inspiring 
awe and interest of the scene itself, lend it a pervading fervour and a 
deepened charm, and invest it with a sublime poetry that weaves its intense 
beauty not more in the grand reality of the breathing picture, than in 
the . visions and aspirations of the gazer's mind. The subject, too, 
possesses an universality, for the history of the death of Charles is one 
familiar to the ear of the world. It was a life-sacrifice extorted 
by the rage of a people, and given by its victim without shame or fear. 
Charles-was r indeed, perhaps more a king upon the scaffold than in any 
other contingency of his disturbed, unpeaceful life His countenance was 
described by the poets and historians of that and after times as wearing 
a look of resignation most dignified and serene: — 

No storm in his human heart, 

No strife upon his brow, 
Where calmness, like a patient child, 

Sits almost smiling now ! 
Seems the meek Monarch, as like one 

Whose gentle spirit sings 



1 68 LAST WORDS OF CHARLES I, 

Its song of solace to the soul 
Before it spreads its wings ! 
And filling, ere it takes its flight, 
His features with a holy light ! 

Yet that serenest heavenly look 
Wears well its taint of earth ; 
And mortal majesty retains 
The impress of its birth ! 
The lion doth not hang his mane, 
The eagle droop his wing ; 
The lofty glance, the regal mien, 
Fall only with the King : 
And Charles's calm, unquailing eye 
Shames all who thought he feared to die ! 

The above grand crisis of morals, religion, and government is yet but 
imperfectly understood, notwithstanding so many books have been 
written and published in illustration of it. Coleridge attributes this labour 
lost to the want of genius or imagination in these works: " Not one 
of their authors seems to be able to throw himself back into that age : 
if they did, there would be less praise and less blame bestowed on 
both sides." 



LAST WORDS OF CHARLES I. 

Mr. Hargrave Jennings {Notes and Queries, second series, x.) has 
called attention to the solemn word, " Remember," the last word which 
Charles uttered on the scaffold ; it was addressed to Bishop Juxon. Im- 
pressed by the King's manner when he was pronouncing the word, and 
suspicious of what the communication should be — also actuated by some 
arousing private curiosity independently of any political significance to 
be attached to it — the officers on duty, in the first instance, and the Com- 
missioners of the Commons afterwards, insisted on Bishop Juxon declaring 
what the impairment was which the king made. He only told his 
questioners that the king's last words were meant as a message to his son, 
and that the private communication, and the word " Remember/' enforc- 
ing it, were only to enjoin forgiveness of his enemies, by his son, in the 
future time. Those who had questioned Juxon seemed to have been 
content with this answer. 

Mr. Jennings is not satisfied that nothing lay under this solemn adju- 
ration. A'-The- words -of the- historian are: 'Charles, having taken off 
his cloak, delivered his ' George ' to the prelate, pronouncing the word 
'Remember!' In that awful moment — the last opportunity for any 
farther dealing on earth — when the unfortunate Charles was literally 
bidding adieu to the world, and standing in the presence of the Angel 
of Death, with, as it were, the light of the other world disclosing upon 
his figure, he almost seeming to have ceased to have aught to do with this 
state of things, Mr. Jennings thinks it not likely— nor, in the nature of* 
probabilities, is it to be believed— that he was merely giving utterance 
to a common-place expression of general, unexalted forgiveness ; and he 



THE CALVES' HEAD CLUB. 169 

maintains that infinitely more was under this impartment than either the 
suspicions of the time seemed to have conceived, or modern ideas ever 
to have speculated upon. The effect produced, on the scaffold, on the 
witnesses of the execution, by this significant injunction, is proven by 
the pains which were immediately taken to find out the meaning. We 
have reason to conclude that Bishop Juxon was not only inquired of, 
concerning it, on the scaffold, after the tragedy of the king's execution 
had been consummated, but that he was sent for to Whitehall, to be 
questioned by Cromwell and the king's judges. Great things — extra- 
ordinary things — wonderful things were in Charles's mind after the ex- 
citements of his trial and the terrible results in condemnation. What 
should be the state of a man's mind, under such circumstances, we can 
only conceive. In this tumult of new sensations, and in the intense and 
preternatural stretch and agony of his mind, it is very possible that he 
might have achieved, in the state of exaltation well known to those who 
are conversant with the phenomena (during paroxysms) of clairvoyant 
■ far-seeing,' to a real, prophetic conviction of things to happen after 
him, and of the restoration of monarchy in England, and of the attain- 
ment — little as it seemed likely then — of his son to the throne. This 
was a vision in the sense that we understand it of saints. But chiefest 
of all in proof of these convictions regarding this interesting and hitherto 
unexplained matter, is the declaration that such a vision — or supernatural, 
prophetic judgment — was really experienced by the king. We hope, in 
future accounts of King Charles the First, that this present little history 
of a doubtful but important passage will find its proper room." 

Colonel Tomlinson commanded the regiment of cavalry on guard at 
the execution. They are shown in a picture made of Whitehall at 
the time. In the histories Colonel Tomlinson is said to have been " con- 
verted " at the beheading of the king. Could this " conversion " con- 
sist in his belief of a miracle in the king's assurance ! 

John Aubrey, under the date of 1696, in his Miscellanies — the edition 
published after his death — states, as a fact within his precise knowledge, 
that : — " After King Charles the First was condemned, he did tell 
Colonel Tomlinson that he ' believed the English Monarchy was now 
at an end.' About half an hour after, with a radiant countenance, and 
as if with a pretematurally assured manner, he affirmed to the Colonel, 
positively, that his son should reign after him. This information I had 
from Fabian Phillips, Esq., of the Inner Temple, who had the best 
authority for the truth of it. I forget whether Mr. Phillips, who was 
under some reserve, named to me the particular person. But I suspect 
that it was Colonel Tomlinson himself." This divination it was that 
probably "converted" Colonel Tomlinson. 



THE CALVES HEAD CLUB. 

This was a pretended Society held " in ridicule of the memory of 
Charles I.," first noticed in the Secret History, supposed to be written by 
Ned Ward, attributing the formation of the Club to Milton and some 



170 ROYALTY DEDUCED FROM A TUB-WOMAN. 

other friends of the Commonwealth, who were said to meet privately 
every 30th of January, with a private form of service for the day. After 
the Restoration they met very secretly; but in the reign of King Wil- 
liam, in a public manner, at no fixed house, the Secret History states, 
in a blind alley near Moorfields, where an axe hung up in the club room. 
The bill of fare was a large dish of calves' heads, by which was repre- 
sented the King and his friends ; a large pike with a small one in his 
mouth, as an emblem of tyranny ; a large cod's head representing the 
person of the King singly, and a boar's head with an apple in its mouth, 
to represent the King as bestial. After the repast the Ikon Basilike was 
burnt upon the table, anthems were sung, and the oath was sworn upon 
Milton's Defensio Populi Anglicani. The company consisted of Inde- 
pendents and Anabaptists ; Jerry White, formerly chaplain to Oliver 
Cromwell, said grace, and after the removal of the table-cloth, the anni- 
versary anthem was sung, and a calf's skull filled with wine or other 
liquor, and then a brimmer went about to the memory of those worthy 
patriots who had killed the tyrant, &c. The tract went through nine 
editions, but it was a literary fraud, to keep alive the calumny, there 
being actually no Club at all. Some thirty years after occurred a scene 
which seemed to give colour to the truth of the existence of the Club ; 
some young noblemen and gentlemen met at a tavern in Suffolk-street, 
called themselves the Calves'-head Club, dressed up a calf's-head in a 
napkin, threw it upon a bonfire, dipped their napkins in red wine, and 
waved them out of the windows ; the mob in the street had strong beer 
given them, but taking umbrage at some healths proposed, they broke 
the windows, and rushed into the house ; but the guards being sent for, 
prevented further mischief. This outrage took place on January 30th, 
the fact to expiate the murder of Charles I. 

To sum up, the whole affair was a hoax, kept alive by the pretended 
Secret History. An accidental riot, following a debauch on one 30th of 
January, has been distributed between two successive years, owing to a 
misapprehension of the mode of reckoning time prevalent in the early 
part of the last century ; and there is no more reason for believing in 
the existence of a Calves'-head Club, in 1734-5, than there is for believing 
it to exist in 1868. 



ROYALTY DEDUCED FROM A TUB -WOMAN. 

In 1 768, there appeared in the newspapers the following paragraph : — 
" During the troubles of the reign of Charles I., a country girl came to 
London in search of a place ; but not succeeding, she applied to be al- 
lowed to carry out beer from a brewhouse. These women were then 
called tub-women. The brewer, observing her to be a very good-look- 
ing girl, took her from this low situation into his house, and afterwards 
married her ; and while she was yet a young woman, he died, and left 
her a large fortune. She was recommended, on giving up the brewery, 
to Mr. Hyde, a most able lawyer, to settle her husband's affairs ; he, in 
process of time, married the widow, and was made Earl of Clarendon. 
Of this marriage, there was a daughter, who was afterwards wife to 



CHARLES II. 171 



James II., and mother of Mary and Anne, queens of England." This 
statement was answered by a letter in the London Chronicle, December 
20, 1768, proving that " Lord Clarendon married Frances, the daughter 
of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, knight and baronet, one of the Masters of 
Request to King Charles I., by whom he had four sons — viz., Henry, 
afterwards Earl of Clarendon ; Lawrence, afterwards Earl of Rochester ; 
Edward, who died unmarried ; and James, drowned on board the 
Gloucester frigate : also two daughters — Anne, married to the Duke of 
York ; and Frances, married to Thomas Keightley, of Hertingfordbury, 
in the county of Flerts, Esq." The story appears to have been a piece 
of political scandal. The mother of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell, is 
said to have conducted with great ability the affairs of her husband's 
brewhouse at Huntingdon. This some republican spirit appears to have 
thought an indignity ; so, by way of retaliation, he determined on sink- 
ing the origin of the inheritors of the crown to the lowest possible grade 
— that of a tub-woman. 

The same story has been told of the wife of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, 
great-grandmother of the two queens ; and for anything we know yet 
of her family, it may be quite true. 



CHARLES II. IN ADVERSITY AND PROSPERITY. 

Happy, says John Evelyn, had it been for this sovereign, if he had de- 
meaned himself as well in his prosperity as in his adverse fortune. The 
recorded facts are highly honourable to him and the companions of his 
exile. While Cromwell, as the Queen of Bohemia said, was the Beast 
in the Revelations, that all kings and nations worshipped, Charles's 
horses, and some of them were favourites, were sold at Brussels because 
he could not pay for their keep, and during the two years that he resided 
at Cologne he never kept a coach. So straitened were the exiles for 
money, that even the postage of letters between Sir Richard Browne and 
Hyde, was no easy burthen ; and there was a mutiny in the Ambassador's 
kitchen, because the maid might not be trusted with the government, 
and the buying of meat, in which she was thought too lavish. Hyde 
writes that he had not been master , of a crown for many months ; that 
he was cold tor want of clothes and fire ; and for all the meat which he 
had eaten for three months, he was in debt to a poor woman who was 
no longer able to trust. "Our necessities," he says, "would be more 
insupportable, if we did not see the king reduced to greater distress than 
you can believe or imagine." 

Of Charles, in prosperity, a few days before his death, Evelyn draws 
a fearful picture of dissipation. Writing on the day when James II. 
was proclaimed, he says : " I can never forget the inexpressible luxury 
and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were, total for- 
getfulness of God, (it being Sunday evening,) which, this day sennight, I 
was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, Ports- 
mouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarine, &c, a French boy singing love songs 
in that glorious gallery [at Whitehall] ; whilst about twenty of the 



172 WEARING OAK ON THE i<f H OF MAY. 

great courtiers, and other dissolute persons, were at basset round a large 
table— a bank of at least 2000/. in gold before them ; upon which two 
gentlemen, who were with me, made reflexions with astonishment. Six 
days after, all was in the dust !" 



SIR RICHARD WILLIS'S PLOT AGAINST CHARLES 

THE SECOND. 

At No. 13, in chambers of the old courts of Lincoln's Inn, built in 
the reign of James I., lived John Thurloe, secretary to Oliver Cromwell, 
who must often have been here. Burch, in his Life of Thurloe, relates 
that one night, early in 1659, Cromwell came here for the purpose of 
discussing secret and important business with Thurloe. They had con- 
versed together for some time, when Cromwell suddenly perceived a clerk 
asleep at his desk. This happened to be Mr. Morland (afterwards Sir 
Samuel Morland) the famous mechanist, and not unknown as a states- 
man. Cromwell, it is affirmed, drew his dagger, and would have des- 
patched him on the spot had not Thurloe, with some difficulty, prevented 
him. He assured him that his intended victim was certainly sound 
asleep, since, to his own knowledge, he had been sitting up the two pre- 
vious nights. But Morland only feigned sleep, and overheard the con- 
versation, which was a plot for throwing the young King Charles II., 
then resident at Bruges, and the Dukes of York and Gloucester, into the 
hands of the Protector ; Sir Richard Willis having planned that on a 
stated day they should pass over to a certain port in Sussex, where they 
would be received on landing by a body of 500 men, to be augmented 
on the following morning by 2000 horse. Had they fallen into the snare, 
it seems that all three would have been shot immediately on their reach- 
ing the shore ; but Morland disclosed the designs to the royal party, and 
thus frustrated the diabolical scheme. This is a good story, but, unfor- 
tunately, it rests upon very questionable evidence. 



WEARING OAK ON THE TWENTY-NINTH OF MAY. 

The origin of wearing this badge is commonly believed to be to com- 
memorate the preservation of Charles II. in the oak, on May 29. Now, 
Charles fought the battle of Worcester on Wednesday, the 3rd of Sep- 
tember 1 65 1 ; he fled from the field, attended by Lords Derby and 
Wilmot, and others, and arrived early next morning at Whiteladies, 
about three quarters of a mile from Boscobel House. At this place 
Charles secreted himself in a wood, and in a tree (from the king's own 
account, a pollard oak), since termed " the royal oak ;" and at night 
Boscobel House was his place of refuge. At Whiteladies he exchanged 
his habiliments for those of the faithful Penderell. Subsequently he em- 
barked at Shoreham on the 15th of October, and landed next day at 
Fescamp in Normandy. On his return to England, Charles entered 
London on his birthday, the 29th of May, when the Royalists displayed 



THE SON OF CHARLES II. 173 

the branch of oak, from that tree having been instrumental in the king's 
restoration : hence the custom of wearing oak on this day, and not 
from Charles being then concealed in the oak. It may be added, that 
the oak could scarcely have been in sufficient leaf in May to have con- 
cealed the king. Boscobel House is situated near Bridgnorth, Salop, 
1 40 miles from the metropolis ; and that part of it which rendered such 
essential service to the sovereign is still shown. The oak has long been 
removed ; but another, presumed to have been a seedling from it, 
occupies its place, and is walled round for preservation. 



GENERAL MONKS MARRIAGE. 

The most curious portion of Monk's private history is his marriage 
to Ann, daughter of John Clarges, a farrier, in the Savoy, in the Strand. 
She was first married to Thomas Radford, farrier. She sold wash- 
balls, powder, gloves, &c, at the New Exchange, Strand, and she 
taught plain work to girls. In 1647, she and her husband fell out and 
separated; no certificate of any parish register appears recording his 
burial. In 1652, she was married at the Church of St. George, South- 
wark, to General Monk, though it is said her first husband was living 
at the time. In the following year she was delivered of a son, 
Christopher, who was suckled by Honour Mills, who sold apples, herbs, f 
oysters, &c. Nan's mother was one of Five Women Barbers, celebrated / 
in her time. Nan is described by Clarendon as a person " of the lowest/ 
extraction, without either wit or beauty ;" and Aubrey says, " she was' 
not at all handsome nor cleanly," and that she was seamstress to Monk 
when he was imprisoned in the Tower. She is known to have had 
great control and authority over him. Upon his being raised to a 
dukedom, and her becoming Duchess of Albemarle, her father, the 
farrier (who had his forge upon the site of No. 317, on the north side 
of the Strand,) is said here to have raised a Maypole to commemorate 
his daughter's good fortune. She died a few days after the Duke, and 
is interred by his side, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, Westminster 
Abbey. The Duke was succeeded by his son, Christopher, who mar- 
ried Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, grand-daughter of the Duke of New- 
castle, and who died childless. The Duchess' brother, Thomas Clarges, 
became a physician of note, and was created a baronet in 1674, after 
whose son, Sir Thomas Clarges, was named Clarges-street, Piccadilly, 
built about 1717. 



LA CLOCHE, THE SON OF CHARLES II. 

The existence of this son has hitherto entirely escaped the knowledge 
of the biographers of Charles ; and, indeed, the only notices of him 
even still attainable are derived from the papers published by Boero, the 
letters of his father, and the entries in the records of the noviciate of 
St. Andrew at Rome. Charles himself, in one of his letters to the 
general of the Jesuits, states that his boy was born to him " in the 



174 THE FIRST DUKE OF ST. ALBAN'S. 

island of Jersey, when he was little more than sixteen or seventeen 
years old, of a young lady of one of the noblest families in his domi- 
nions." He was brought up as a Protestant in Holland, whence in 
1665 he was removed secretly to London, but soon afterwards, feeling 
unhappy on account of the equivocal position which he there held, he 
appears to have returned of his own accord to the Continent in 1667, 
bearing with him a formal acknowledgment of his parentage, signed by 
the king, and authenticated by the Royal seal, to which was afterwards 
added a deed of settlement assigning to him a pension of 500/. A few 
months after his return to the Continent he was received into the Roman 
Catholic Church at Hamburg, under the inspiration, it would seem, of 
Queen Christina of Sweden, then in the first fervour of her zeal for her 
new faith ; and in the latter part of the same year he entered the novi- 
ciate of the Jesuit Society at Rome, under the name of James La 
Cloche (which, by the way, was the name of his mother's family), his 
real name being kept secret from all, with the single exception of his 
confessor ; even the general of the order himself was not informed of it. 
— The Gentleman s Magazine. 



WHO BUILT CHELSEA HOSPITAL? 

The founder of the Holland family, Stephen Fox, who was a singing-boy 
in Salisbury choir. He subsequently obtained a situation in the royal 
household of the exiled Stuart family ; and on the Restoration was ap- 
pointed army paymaster, in which situation he amassed enormous wealth 
by discounting soldiers' bills. In connexion with the history of this, the 
first Lord Holland, a popular error falls to the ground. The general 
belief holds that Nell Gwyn caused Charles II. to establish Chelsea 
Hospital, but there is no doubt that its foundation was owing mainly to 
Fox, who, as some men build churches to expiate their crimes, devoted 
a large sum out of his enormous gains at the expense of the army to 
create this asylum for aged and decayed soldiers, previously reduced to 
constant street beggary. It is said that he built to the extent of 20,000/. 
of this college, as it is termed ; and that he endowed it with 5,000/. per 
annum as maintenance. 



THE FIRST DUKE OF ST. ALBAN S. 

The first Duke, the reader need scarcely be told, was Charles Beau- 
clerk, illegitimate son of Charles II., by his Majesty's celebrated mistress, 
Eleanor Gwyn. [The family motto, Ausplclum melioris cenji, (a pledge 
of better times,) is a strange conceit.] The tradition of his first eleva- 
tion to the Peerage is not so well known. Charles one day going to see 
Nelly Gwyn, and the little boy being in the room, the king wanted to 
speak to him. His mother called to him, " Come hither, you little 
bastard, and speak to your father." " Nay, Nelly," said the King, "do 
not give the child such a name." " Your Majesty," replied Nelly, " has 
given me no other name by which I may call him !" Upon this the 



WAS CHARLES II. POISONED? t ^ 

King conferred on him. the name of Beauclerk, and created him Earl of 
Burford ; and shortly before his death made him Duke of St. Alban's. 
He served for some years in the Imperial armies, and gained great 
honour by his gallantry at the assault of Belgrade in 1688. He after- 
wards served under King William, who made him Captain of the band 
of Gentlemen Pensioners, and a Lord of the Bedchamber. Queen 
Anne continued him in these posts till the Tory ministry came in, when 
he resigned. He was, however, restored to them by George I., who 
also gave him the Garter. He died at the age of fifty-five, iVIay nth, 
1726; "having ; married Diana, heiress of Aubrey de Vere, last "Earl of 
Oxford. 



HOUSES IN WHICH NELL GWYN IS SAID TO HAVE 

LIVED. 

" There are more houses pointed out," says Mr. Peter Cunningham, 
in his piquant Story, " in which Nell Gwyn is said to have lived, than 
sites of palaces belonging to King John, hunting-lodges believed to have 
sheltered Queen Elizabeth, or mansions and sporting-houses in which 
Oliver Cromwell resided or put up. She is said by some to have been 
born at Hereford ; by others, at London ; and Oxford, it is found, has 
a fair claim to be considered as her birthplace. But the houses in which 
she is said to have lived far exceed in number the cities contending for 
the honour of her birth. She is believed by some to have lived at 
Chelsea, by others at Bagnigge Wells ; Highgate, and Walworth, and 
Filberts, near Windsor, are added to the list of reputed localities. A 
staring inscription in the Strand, in London, instructs the curious pas- 
senger that a house at the upper end of a narrow court was ' formerly 
a daily of Nell Gwyn.' I have been willing to believe in one and all 
of these conjectural residences, but after a long and careful inquiry, I 
am obliged to reject them all. Her early life was spent in Drury-lane 
and Lincoln's-inn- Fields; her latter life in Pall Mall, and in Burford 
House, in the town of Windsor. [" The Prince of Wales is lodged 
(at Windsor) in the Princess of Denmark's house, which was Mrs. 
Ellen Gwyn's." Letter, Aug. 14, 1688, Ellis Corresp.n. 118.] The 
rate-books of the parish of St. Martin's- in-the- Fields record her residence 
in Pall Mall from 1670 to her death ; and the site of her house in 
Windsor may be established, if other evidence were wanting, by 
the large engraving after Knyff." 



WAS CHARLES II. POISONED? 

It was the belief of many at the time that Charles II. was poisoned. 
It was common then and in the preceding age to attribute the sudden 
death of any great man to poison ; but in Charles's case the suspicions 
are not without authority. Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, says : " The 
most knowing and the most deserving of all his physicians did not only 
believe him poisoned, but thought himself so too, not long after, for 



176 FORTUNES OF THE HOUSE OF STUART 

having declared his opinions a little too boldly." (Buckingham's 
Works, vol. ii.) Bishop Patrick (Autobiography,) strengthens the sup- 
position from the testimony of Sir Thomas Mellington, who sat with 
the King for three days, and never went to bed for three nights. _Lord 
Chesterfield (Letters to his Son), the grandson to the Earl of Chester- 
field, who was with Charles at his death, states positively that the King 
was 'poisoned. The Duchess of Portsmouth, when in England in 
1699, is said to have told Lord Chancellor Cowper that Charles II. was 
poisoned at her house by one of her footmen in a dish of chocolate ; 
and Fox had heard a somewhat similar report from the family of his 
mother, who was grand-daughter to the Duchess. 

This historical evidence is, however, invalidated by more recent 
investigation. Charles II., according to the account of his physician, 
Sir C. Scarborough, had just risen from his bed when he experienced an 
unusual sensation in his head, shortly after which he fell down speech- 
less, and without power of motion. An army surgeon, who happened 
to 'be at hand, bled him to the extent of 16 ounces ; after which, on 
the arrival of the royal physician, his Majesty was cupped, and other 
remedies used — such as an emetic, purgatives, &c. ; but he expired on 
the fourth day. Had there been safety in a multitude of councillors, 
the King's life must have been preserved, for Sir Henry Halford found 
the signatures of no less than fourteen physicians to one of the prescrip- 
tions. Among the remedies prescribed when the King was sinking was 
the spiritus cranii humani, 25 drops, which certainly has been improved 
upon in our modern preparations of ammonia. 

Buckingham and Halifax, the two men who, perhaps, were best 
acquainted with Charles II., both declared he was a deist. " His sub- 
sequent conversion to Catholicism," says Buckle, " is exactly analogous 
to the increased devotion of Louis XIV. during the later years of his 
life. In both cases, superstition was the natural refuge of a worn-out 
and discontented libertine, who had exhausted all the resources of the 
lowest and most grovelling pleasures." 

On examining King Charles's head, a copious effusion of lymph was 
found in the ventricles and at the base of the cranium, from which Sir 
Henry Halford was disposed to think that the King might have been 
still further bled with advantage. It is quite evident from Sir Henry's 
account that Charles II. died of apoplexy— the only too probable con- 
sequence of his excesses — and consequently, that his indifference to the 
solicitations of those about him on religious matters can only, with 
charity, be attributed to the effects of his disease. 



STRANGE FORTUNES OF THE HOUSE OF STUART. 

Since the days of the great Theban and Pelopid Houses of Greece, 
whose wars formed the staple of Athenian tragedy, there has been no 
family occupying or allied to a throne so incessantly haunted by cala- 
mity as the House of Stuart. Yet the last lineal heir , of this doomed 
race was a peaceable, inoffensive gentleman, who attained almost to 



THE HOUSE OF STUART. 177 

Priam's age with but few of Priam's infelicities. Henry Benedict Maria 
Clement was the second and youngest son of " the old Pretender." He 
was bom in March, 1725, and died in June, 1807. Almost without a 
metaphor he may-be said to have pertained to two different worlds, 
since he had nearly attained to the Psalmist's span of life when the 
crowning misfortune of his life overtook him, and meanwhile witnessed 
the final acts of the Europe which the French Revolution swept away. 
His Memoirs read like those of an antediluvian. In July, 1740, the 
poet Gray saw him at Florence, then in his sixteenth year, dancing 
incessantly all night long at a ball given by the Count Patrizii, and 
describes him as having " more spirit than his elder brother." He was 
no further concerned with the events of 1745 than "in joining the 
troops assembled at Dunkirk to support his brother's operations in 
Scotland." Two years later, both his dancing and his active life came 
to an end, since he was then invested with a Cardinal's hat by Pope 
Benedict XIV., and passed the next fifty years of his life in the perfor- 
mance of the duties of religion. On the death of his brother Charles, in 
1788, the only step which he took to assert his right to the British 
throne was to cause a paper to be drawn up, in which his rightful claims 
were insisted on ; while at the same time he ordered a medal to be 
struck, with the inscription — " Henricus Nonus, Angliae Rex " on the 
obverse; and the pathetic words "Dei Gratia, Sed Non Voluntate 
Hominum on the reverse." 

But this titular king was not destined to entire exemption from the 
woes of his race. He had impaired his once ample means by aiding 
Pius VI. to make up the sum levied on him by Napoleon. This, how- 
ever, was only the beginning of sorrows. In 1798, the French attacked 
his palace in the neighbourhood of Rome, and compelled him to fly, an 
infirm and almost destitute man, at first to Padua, and subsequently to 
Venice. His necessities were relieved in 1800 by the occupant of his 
throne ; and in a letter, breathing both Christian resignation and Royal 
dignity, he acknowledges that Henry the Ninth accepted from the hands 
of George III. an annual pension of 4000/. In return, the Cardinal 
bequeathed to George IV., then Prince of Wales, the crown jewels 
which, one hundred and twenty years before, his grandfather had car- 
ried off with him in his flight from England. Among these relics was 
the "George," which his great-grandfather had consigned to Bishop 
Juxon on the scaffold, uttering the valedictory " Remember." And so 
departed from earth and its troubles the last scion of the House of 
Stuart. — Saturday Review. 



ENGLISH ADHERENTS OF' THE HOUSE OF STUART. 

A Correspondent of Notes and Queries, 3rd S.,No. 294, observes that 
the English adherents of the House of Stuart have been underrated in 
their services in favour of the Scotch and Irish followers of the same 
noble house. One may instance General Monk's great service in re- 
storing King Charles II. Next in order comes the Duke of Berwick, 

N 



178 KINGS AND PRETENDERS. 

whose successful enterprise in setting the crown of Spain on the rightful 
claimant's head, the Duke of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV., 
made the Bourbon family compact possible. Then Lord Chatham's 
(who, under the name of patriot, was, no doubt, a concealed Jacobite ; 
his frequent attacks upon the employment of Hanoverian troops in this 
country show his leaning) measure in attacking Canada, and taking it 
from the French, resulted in France and Spain joining to support 
American independence, and wrested the American Colonies — now the 
fine country of the United States — out of the hands of the House of 
Hanover. " Washington was the descendant of a royalist who fought 
for King Charles I.; and Lord Mahon mentions in his History of England, 
that when the Scotch in the neighbourhood of New York, offered to 
raise the Standard of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, a paper among 
the Stuart papers states, that his answer was for them ' to mind their 
own business ' — that is, that the then representative of the Stuart family 
wished them to side with Washington, which no doubt they did. 

" And lastly, let us not forget Dean Swift, whose D rapier Letters to 
the People of Ireland, kept them from a useless insurrection, and paved 
the way, with William Pitt's Union of England and Ireland, to the mea- 
sure, afterwards carried by Daniel O'Connell, of Catholic Emancipation ; 
seating the Irish Catholic members in the English House of Com- 
mons, thus creating a powerful body of Irish Catholic members in sup- 
port of the English Catholics, always great adherents of the House of 
Stuart. This measure (the Catholic Emancipation) would have been 
of no use if William Pitt, the worthy son of Lord Chatham, had not, 
by the Union of Ireland with England, abolished the Irish Parliament, 
because Ireland was commanded by the English Fleet." 



KINGS AND PRETENDERS. 

A King by Act of Parliament, however essential to the liberties of a 
nation, is a prosaic sort of being ; but a king by Right Divine presents 
much that is attractive to persons who weigh events and characters in 
the scales of sentiment. Apollo himself would have failed had he com- 
posed ballads in honour of a German Elector, stricken in years and 
dressed in snuff-coloured broadcloth ; while even the bellman's verses 
rang well when a young Prince in plaid and bonnet was their theme. 
Had Charles I. not been drawn by Vandyke, or had he died before the 
raising of the standard at Nottingham, it is possible that we should esteem 
him a very commonplace person. His address was embarrassed, his 
figure was puny, he was slightly lame, and his manner was sullen and 
ungracious. But Charles in armour, belted and plumed, and surrounded 
by the gallant gentlemen of his realm, riding in triumph to Barnet, or 
reviewing his squadrons on the morning of Marston Moor, becomes an 
object of interest even to those who lean to Oliver and his Ironsides ; 
and it needed only a tragic fate to convert this long unpopular Prince 
into a hero and a martyr. A similar fortune, in various degrees, _ at- 
tended his posterity, enthroned or exiled. There was, indeed, little 



BAKER'S CHRONICLE. i; 9 

enough romance in the voluptuary, his successor. Yet as an exile, he 
was an object of compassion to many who would have been content 
with a Cromwell dynasty ; and after his restoration, " the first gentle- 
man of the day " won the hearts of the crowd by his popular manners 
and exquisite urbanity. Two members only of the English Stuart 
family were devoid of personal attractions — the first and second James. 
The former, with some worth and considerable learning, was a low 
comedian, shuffled by chance upon a throne ; the other, bating a kind 
of bull-dog insensibility to danger, at least in his earlier years, possessed no 
popular merit whatever. He was a dull, abject creature, who neither 
inspired respect while in authority nor excited pity when in affliction. 

In the characters of the Old and Young Pretender, apart from their 
adventures, there was little to awaken or justify enthusiasm. The elder 
one was as prosaic as his sire, and was qualified by nature for no higher 
post than that of gold or silver stick in his own household. When 
he reviewed the Highland clans at Perth, in 1715, these doughty war- 
riors could hardly be made to believe that they looked on a king's son. 
" He carried his sword like a dancer," shivered in the keen air of Scot- 
land " like a sick girl," and could with difficulty be induced to accost 
the chiefs who were risking life and lands in his cause. Charles Edward 
was cast in a more herioic mould. He had not been wholly educated 
by priests ; he bore some resemblance to his chivalrous ancestor James 
IV.; he could wield a claymore, breast the elements, dance reels ad- \ 
mirably, and was winning and affable in manner, like his great-uncle 
Charles. But, after " the '45," his prestige passed away rapidly. In a 
few years the free use of the bottle converted "the young Chevalier" 
into a stout and red-nosed man, who beat his wife, and (report said) 
was in turn himself beaten by his mistresses — who, when half sober was 
dangerously irascible, and when wholly drunk was plundered and reviled 
by his own buffoons. — Saturday Review. 



SIR RICHARD BAKER'S CHRONICLE OF THE KINGS 

OF ENGLAND. 

Sir Richard Baker, of whom Fuller speaks in his English Worthies, 
was a native of Oxfordshire. He was descended from Sir John Baker J 
Chancellor of the Exchequer to Henry VIII. ; was educated at the 
University of Oxford, and knighted in 1603. He married and settled in 
his native country before the year 1620. Having got into difficulties, as it 
should seem, soon after his marriage, he was thrown into the Fleet 
Prison, where he spent the remaining years of his life, and died in the 
year 1644-5, m a state °f extreme poverty.* It was during his impri- 
sonment, and as a means of subsistence, that he wrote his Chronicle, and 



* Sir Richard Baker, according to the rate-books of St. Clement Danes, 
lived in Milford-lane, Strand, from 1632 to 1639, which had then an unwelcome 
notoriety.— (Cunningham's Handbook). Baker was buried in the old church 
of St. Bride, Fleet-street, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. 

N 2 



j8o BAKER'S CHRONICLE. 

various other works, a circumstance which should, perhaps, induce us to 
judge leniently of their short-comings. But Baker has been treated 
otherwise, probably through his own conceit or pretensions, in affirming 
that his Chronicle was collected and compiled " with so great care and 
diligence, that if all other of our Chronicles should be lost, this only 
would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages worthy or me- 
morable to be known." This is boastful overmuch. Yet, the Chronicle 
enjoyed great popularity for more than a century after its publication, 
among the squires and ancient gentlewomen of the school of Sir Roger 
de Coverley. The manner was new, and as the sarcastic author of the 
Historical Library remarked, "pleasing to the rabble," meaning by the 
term " rabble/' all persons not eminently learned. Holinshed was too 
bulky, and Speed too dull a writer to be popular ; while Sir Richard's 
residence in the Fleet was not very compatible with those numerous 
references to authorities and antiquarian researches which find favour in 
the eyes of learned men, but perplex and weary the general reader. 
Soon after the publication of the Chronicle, Thomas Blount, a barrister, 
printed his animadversions on it ; which, however, did not impede its 
success. It w T as also ridiculed by Addison and Fielding, but it is by 
no means so flimsy a performance as the humour of our great essayist 
and novelist would have us believe. 

Anthony a Wood styles Baker a noted writer; and Daines Barrington 
says, Baker is by no means so contemptible a writer as he is supposed to 
be : for more than a century his Chronicle was the text-book of English 
history to country gentlemen and their families, and has given more 
pleasure and perhaps diffused more knowledge than historical w^orks of 
far higher pretensions. 

Another critic writes: "Sir Richard Baker is, if you please, very 
stupid, very uncritical, quite unable to understand what he writes about; 
but he is in earnest from beginning to end. Sir Richard's folio is a pro- 
digy of mere work. The whole thing is of course misconceived ; there 
are plenty of particular blunders, the natural result of imperfect scholar- 
ship ; but there is good honest work in abundance. The mass of in- 
formation, seemingly honestly draw^n from original sources, is really 
amazing. There is, to be sure, nothing worthy to be called criticism, 
and the w r hole goes on a theory that whatever a king did must, if possible, 
be shown to be right. Still, Sir Richard's comments are by no means 
void of occasional glimmerings of sound common sense. He tells his 
story simply and straightforwardly, without any attempt at either elo- 
quence or jocularity : but, like many writers of his age, he is not wholly 
devoid of a certain vein of humour, conscious or unconscious, which 
is not inconsistent with earnestness and simplicity." — {Saturday 
Review.^) 

If Sir Richard Baker had been imprisoned in such a house as the British 
Museum instead of the Fleet, he would, doubtless, have produced a 
more correct book, with less pleasantry in it. 

The first two editions extend only from the Romans to James I., but 
in 1660, it was re-published by Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, 
who continued it to the Coronation of Charles II., having the perusal of 



DEFENCE OF "JUDGE JEFFREYS:' iSi 

some of the papers of General Monk concerning the Restoration, which 
Phillips was censured for having misrepresented, though the account was 
really written by Sir Thomas Clarges. The best edition of Baker's 
Chronicle is that published in 1733, continued to the end of the reign of 
George L, though there are many curious papers in the former impres- 
sions which are omitted in this. We have already quoted some passages 
from this eccentric and much abused work. 



DEFENCE OF LORD CHANCELLOR JEFFREYS. 

It has been well said that the very atrocities of the brutal Jeffreys 
cannot overwhelm and silence the meed of approbation to which some 
parts of his judicial excellence are entitled. Of him as a statesman, or 
as a criminal judge, Lord Campbell details acts which show him in both 
capacities to deserve reprobation such as no language could adequately 
express. He cannot, like his predecessors, Lord Clarendon and Lord 
Nottingham, be accused of bigotry ; for all religious creeds as well as all 
political opinions seem to have been really indifferent to him, and in his 
choice of those which he professed he was guided only by his " desire to 
climb." Even the strong hatred against Dissenters which he affected 
when he had changed sides, he could (as in Rosew ell's case), to please 
the Government, entirely lay aside or suspend. From his daring and re- 
solute character he probably felt a genuine contempt for "a Trimmer ;" 
and having no personal antipathy to an opponent who boldly went into 
extremes like himself, his bile was excited by watching a struggle be- 
tween conscience and convenience. The revival of the Court of High 
Commission is the only great unconstitutional measure which he has the 
credit of having originated; but there were no measures, however 
illegal or pernicious, proposed by Charles or James, to the execution of 
which Jeffreys did not devotedly and recklessly abandon himself. 

As a civil judge he was by no means without high qualifications, and 
in the absence of any motive to do wrong, he was willing to do right. 
He had a very quick perception, a vigorous and logical understanding, 
and an impressive eloquence. 

When quite sober, he was particularly good as a Nisi Prius Judge. 
His summing up in what is called "the Lady Ivy's case," an ejectment 
between her and the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, to recover a large 
estate at Shadwell, is most masterly. The evidence was exceedingly 
complicated, and he gives a beautiful sketch of the whole, both docu- 
mentary and parol ; and without taking the case from the jury, he makes 
some admirable observations on certain deeds produced by the Lady Ivy, 
which led to the conclusion that they were forged, and to a verdict for 
the Dean and Chapter. 

Lord Campbell proceeds to say that Jeffreys must have been very 
poorly furnished for presiding in Chancery. Although he must often 
have betrayed his ignorance, yet with his characteristic boldness and 
energy, he contrived to get through the business without any signal 
disgrace ; and among all the invectives, satires, and lampoons by which 



1 82 FATE OF SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL. 

his memory is blackened, Lord Campbell found little said against 
his decrees. 

Lord Campbell discovered one benevolent opinion of this cruel Chan- 
cellor, and, strange to say, it is at variance with that of the humane 
magistrates who have adorned Westminster Hall in the nineteenth cen- 
tury. The Prisoners' Counsel Bill was condemned and opposed by 
almost all the judges in the reign of William IV., yet even Jeffreys 
was struck with the injustice and inequality of the law which, allow- 
ing the accused to defend himself by counsel, "for a two-penny tres- 
pass," refuses that aid " where life, estate, honour, and all are concerned ;" 
and he lamented its existence while he declared himself bound to adhere 
to it. The venerable sages who apprehended such multiplied evils from 
altering the practice, must have been greatly relieved by finding that 
their objections have proved as unfounded as those which were urged 
against the abolition of peine forte et dure ; and the alarming innovation 
so long resisted of allowing witnesses for the prisoner to be examined 
under the sanction of an oath. 

There are two versions of the circumstances attending the capture of 
Jeffreys. That commonly received is, that attempting, after the abdication 
of King James, to make his escape in the disguise of a common seaman, 
he was captured in an obscure alehouse called the Red Cow, in Anchor 
and Hope Alley, near King Edward's Stairs, in Wapping ; here he was 
found by a scrivener he had formerly insulted, looking out of a window 
in all the confidence of misplaced security. The other story is that 
Jeffreys lay concealed in his mansion at Leatherhead, in an underground 
vault, a few weeks after the Revolution of 1688, — when " being pro- 
scribed, and a reward set upon his head," he had ventured hither to see 
a daughter who was at the point of death, and whose funeral, as appears 
by the register at Leatherhead, was solemnized December 2nd, in the 
above year. The vault in which the ex-Chancellor took refuge, is well 
adapted for concealment, it being beneath one of the cellars, and covered 
over by a boarded flooring. It is traditionally asserted at Leatherhead, 
that Jeffreys was betrayed for the sake of the reward by his butler, who 
had accompanied him in his flight. 



FATE OF SIR CLOUDESLEY SHOVEL. 

In the Kimbolton Papers (Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne'), 
published in 1864, are two letters of Addison, then Secretary of State, 
which throw some light on the fate of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and cor- 
rect a common mistake. One letter contains an account of the loss of 
Sir Cloudesley Shovel's ship on the Scilly Islands, the other states how 
the Admiral's body was discovered. The popular story, according to 
the writer of the statement, is that the Cornish fishermen or wreckers, 
having found the Admiral's body, stripped it and burnt it on the sand, 
after taking from the finger a fine emerald ring. In reality, however, 
the tradition goes much further. It is said that Sir Cloudesley Shovel 
was thrown on shore alive, and was murdered for the sake of his ring^ 



BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION. 183 

The end of the story as reported in the Kimbolton Papers, is " that Mr. 
Paxton, purser of the Arundel, hearing of the circumstance, saw the ring, 
declared it to be the Admiral's property, and, disinterring the body, carried 
it to England (Portsmouth) in his own ship." Addison, in the following 
letter, puts the story right: — 

" Mr. Addison to Mr. Cole. 

" Cock Pit, Oct. 31, 1707. 
"Sir, — Yesterday, we had news that the body of Sir Cloudesley 
Shovel was found on the coast of Cornwall. The fishermen who were 
searching among the wrecks took a tin box out of the pocket of one of 
the carcases that was floating, and found in it the commission of an 
admiral ; upon which, examining the body more closely, they found it 
was poor Sir Cloudesley. You may guess the condition of his unhappy 
wife, who lost, in the same ship with her husband, her two only sons by 
Sir John Narborough. We begin to despair of the two other men-of- 
war, and fire-ship, that engaged among the same rocks, having yet 
received no news of them. — I am, Sir, your faithful humble servant, 

"J. Addison." 
» 

BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION. 
Swift received his deanery, which he ever held as a most inadequate 
reward, for his services to the Marlborough and Tory faction, in the 
course of 17 13; but he had given his great offence to the Duchess 
nearly three years before, or immediately after his venal quarrels with 
the Whigs for their not giving him church-promotion so rapidly as he 
wished. In the Examiner of Nov. 23rd, 17 10, he published a paper 
reflecting most severely on the Duke of Marlborough's insatiable avarice 
and enormous peculations. The Duke, he said, had had 540,000/. of 
the public money for doing work for which a warrior of ancient Rome 
(an odd parallel) would have received only 994/. 1 1 s. lod. ; and at the end 
of his paper there was an innuendo that the Duchess, in the execution ot 
her office as mistress of the robes during eight years, had purloined no 
less than 22,000/. a year. Here is the account itself from the Examiner, 
in a volume in reply to Sarah's, entitled The Other Side of the Question, 
and published in the same year : — • 

A Bill of Roman Gratitude. 
Imprim. £ s. d. 

For frankincense, and earthen pots to burn it in . . . 4 to o 

A bull for sacrifice 800 

An embroidered garment 50 o o 

A crown of laurel 002 

A statue 100 o o 

A trophy 80 o o 

1000 copper medals, value one halfpenny each ... 218 

A triumphal arch 500 o o 

A triumphal car, valued as a modern coach .... 100 o o 
Casual charges at the triumph 150 o o 

,£994 11 10 



1 84 A VARICE OF MARLBORO UGH. 

A Bill of British Ingratitude. 

Imprim. £ s. d. 

Woodstock 40,000 o o 

Blenheim 200,000 o o 

Post-office grant 100,000 o o 

Mildenheim . 30,000 o o 

Jewels, &c. , 6o,oco o o 

Pali-Mall Grant, the Westminster rangership, &c. . 10,000 o o 

Employments 100,000 o o 

_£ 540, 000 o o 

The anonymous author of The Other Side of the Question does not 
name Swift, but says this account was drawn up many years ago in 
the Examiner, for the use of the Marlborough family, " by one of the 
greatest wits that ever did honour to human nature." 

We agree with Mr. Hannay {Essays from the Quarterly Review), 
that the above is one of the finest prose satires in the language ; and the 
following on Marlborough, from one of the severest lampoons: — 

Behold his funeral appears, — 
Nor widows' sighs nor orphans' tears, 
Wont at such times the heart to pierce, 
Attend the progress of the hearse. 
But what of that ? his friends may say, 
He had those honours in his day ; 
True to his profit and his pride, 
He made them weep before he died. 



AVARICE OF MARLBOROUGH. 

Spei ce has left the following sketch of the ruling passion of this great 
soldiei. " Inconsistent as the Duke of Marlborough's character may ap- 
pear, yet it may be accounted for, if we gauge his actions by hauling 
passion, which was the love of money. He endeavoured, at the same 
time, to be well both at Hanover and St. Germain's: this conduct ex- 
cited much surprise at the time, in those who were made acquainted with 
it, but the plain meaning of it was only this, that he wanted to secure 
the vast riches he had amassed together, whichever should succeed. 
He was calm in the heat of battle, and when he was so near being taken 
prisoner (in his first campaign) in Flanders, he was quite unmoved. It 
was true he was like to lose his life in the one, and his liberty in the 
other; hut there was none of his money at stake in either. This 
mean passion of that great man operated very strongly in him in 
the very beginning of his life, and continued to the very end of 
it. One day, as he was looking over some papers in his scrutoire, 
with Lord Cadogan, he opened one of the little drawers, took out a 
green purse, and turned some broad pieces out of it. After viewing 
them for some time with a satisfaction that appeared very visible on his 
face, ' Cadogan,' said he, ' observe these pieces well, — they deserve to 
be observed. There are just forty of them; 'tis the very first sum I 



AVARICE OF MARLBOROUGH. 185 

ever got in my life, and I have kept it always unbroken, from that time 
to this day.' This shows how very early and how strongly this pas- 
sion must have been upon him, as another little affair which happened 
in his last decline at Bath, may serve (amongst many others) to show 
how miserably it continued to the end. He was playing there 
with Dean Jones at piquet, for sixpence a game. They played a good 
while, and the Duke left off when winner of one game. Some time after, 
he desired the Dean to pay him his sixpence ; the Dean said he had no 
silver, The Duke asked him for it over and over, and at last desired 
that he would change a guinea to pay it him, because he would want it 
to pay the chair that carried him home. The Dean, after so much 
pressing, did at last get change, paid the Duke his sixpence, observed 
him a little after leave the room, and declared that (after all the bustle 
that had been made for this sixpence), the Duke actually walked home 
to save the little expense a chair would have put him to." 

Marlborough has, however, been ably defended against such charges. 
Thus, it is maintained that the charge of Marlborough's taking money 
from the Duchess of Cleveland is almost certainly an impudent fable. 
It arose from an idle story that he once saved her reputation with 
Charles II. by a timely leap out of a window before the king surprised 
him. The tale rests on Lord Dartmouth's authority, and is supposed 
to be corroborated by the fact that Churchill, in 1674, bought an an- 
nuity from Lord Halifax ; but Burnet, whom Lord Halifax professes to 
elucidate, refers the incident to a time (1668) when Churchill was out 
of England, and winning his first laurels at Tangier. Moreover, much 
the same story of an escape from the king is told by Pepys, of Jenny n, 
with somewhat less romantic incidents ; and the fact that Churchill's 
favour with the Duchess dates between the times (1 664-1666) when he 
was fourteen and sixteen years of age — a page whom the courtiers thought 
too listless ever to succeed in love — is a strong presumption that the lady, 
prodigal as she was of money, would find some more suitable present 
for a boy. A favourite page of the Duchess of York, brother to the 
Duke's mistress, son of a staunch courtier, and himself handsome and 
able, Churchill owed his fortune to more natural causes than the caprice 
of Charles II.' s discarded mistresses. The charge of parsimony was 
brought against him by men who meant to ruin his credit at any cost of 
slander, and who knew that the accusation was one which a man 
who has risen from the ranks can scarcely ever refute. Without 
any ancestral patrimony, Churchill was called upon to support 
the position of the first subject in England. It is probable that a 
certain love of order, such as Frederick II. and Wellington possessed, 
led him to regulate his expenses strictly ; but his avarice, if it ever existed, 
never hampered him when a great or necessary action was to be done. 
He gave 1000/. privately to an officer who wanted means to buy his 
promotion. He refused splendid appointments offered him in Hol- 
land, for fear of exciting jealousy. No charge was more virulently 
brought against him than that of embezzling the secret- service money ; 
yet if we look at his campaigns, it is clear that no general was ever better 
supplied with secret- service. The men who called him stingy could on 



1 86 SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 

occasion ridicule his extravagant pomp, his regal entry into London, and 
the great works at Blenheim. Those who accuse him of treachery never 
hint that he was bribed ; yet, Churchill had lived through the days when 
A lgernon Sidney was on the roll of French pensioners. Perhaps the ve- 
neration felt for him by the passionate but high-minded Sarah Jennings 
in itself outweighs the attacks of Swift and Mrs. Manley, and is presump- 
tive evidence, at least, that the great general was not a compound of 
little meannesses. On the other hand, his character has no stainless purity 
or heroic grandeur. He set himself early in life to succeed, and he had 
fallen on times when the path of promotion was slippery. By nature he 
was ever greater as a diplomatist than as a general ; in fact, his strategy 
has the fault of being too scientific and passionless ; it risked nothing ; 
but its successes, as the country felt, did not bring the troops nearer 
the gates of Paris. Marlborough was not needlessly immoral, but we 
suspect he was seldom moral from principle. He refused a bribe from 
Torcy, but he corresponded with James while he served William,. Never 
General cared better for the health of his soldiers ; but no man was more 
prodigal of their blood if a cost ly and useless victory in Flanders would 
maintain his party's tenure of office in England. It is really no anomaly 
that the unscrupulous politician had all the better feelings of a man in his 
domestic relations. Lord Macaulay and Mr. Paget seem to us to err on the 
same principle. The first judges Churchill as a man by his conduct to 
James II. and William III. ; the second apologizes for his public treasons 
by a generous praise of his relations with his wife. It would be profan- 
ing the word to say that Marlborough represented a principle in his con- 
duct to James II. and William III. ; but it was not so purely black and 
selfish as is commonly thought. — National Review, No. 25, pp. 93-95. 



THE ECCENTRIC SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 

A few of the Duchess' eccentricities and extravagances have been 
put together somewhat in the humorous manner of our early story- 
books, as follows : — 

This is the woman who wrote the characters of her contemporaries 
with a pen dipped in gall and wormwood. This is the Duchess who 
gave 10,000/. to Mr. Pitt for his noble defence of the constitution of his 
country ! This is the woman who said of King James II. that he had 
lost three kingdoms, for no other reason than that he might see his 
subjects dance attendance upon him in another ! This is the Duchess 
who, in her old age, used to feign asleep after dinner, and say. bitter 
Jtfeings at table pat and appropriate, but as if she was not aware of what 
was going on ! This is the lady who drew that beautiful distinction 
that it was wrong to wish Sir Robert Walpole dead, but only common 
justice to wish him well hanged. This is the Duchess who tumbled her 
thoughts out as they arose, and wrote like the wife of the great Duke 
of Marlborough. This is the lady who quarrelled with a wit upon paper 
(Sir John Vanbrugh), and actually got the better of him in the long 
run j who shut out the architect of Blenheim from seeing his own edifice, 



SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 187 

and made him dangle his time away at an inn, while his friends were 
shown the house of the eccentric Sarah. This is the lady who laid out 
her money in land, in full expectation of a sponge being applied 
to the Government securities. 

This is the Duchess who, ever proud and ever malignant, was per- 
suaded to offer her favourite grand-daughter, Lady Diana Spencer, 
afterwards Duchess of Bedford, to the Prince of Wales, with a fortune 
of a hundred thousand pounds. He accepted the proposal, and the 
day was fixed for their being secretly married at the Duchess' Lodge, 
in the Great Park, at Windsor. Sir Robert Walpole got intelligence 
of the project, prevented it, and the secret was buried in silence. 
This is the Duchess — 

The wisest fool much time has ever made, 
who refused the proffered hand of the proud Duke of Somerset, for the 
sole and sufficient reason that no one should share her heart with the 
great Duke of Marlborough. 

This is the woman who refused to lend to the Duchess of Bucking- 
ham the funereal car that carried her husband, because no one could 
deserve so great an honour. This is that " wicked woman of Marl- 
borough," as Vanbrugh calls her, whose heart was made up, in the 
language of Swift, " of sordid avarice, disdainful pride, and ungovern- 
able rage." — " A woman of little knowledge," as described by Burnet, 
" but of a clear apprehension and a true judgment." This is the 
woman who left 1000/. by will between two poets, to write the life of 
her illustrious husband — leaving it conditionally, however, " that no 
part of the said history may be in verse." This is the illustrious lady 
who superintended the building of Blenheim, examined contracts and 
tenders, talked with carpenters and masons, and thinking . sevenpence- 
halfpenny a bushel for lime too much by a farthing, waged a war to 
the knife on so small a matter. This is the Duchess who felt in her 
old age, as many have since felt, the stern reality of Dryden's celebrated 
lines: — 

When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat, 
Yet, fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit- 
Trust on and think to-morrow will repay ; 
To-morrow's falser than the former day, 
Lies more, and when it says we shall be blest 
"With some new joy, cuts off what we possest, 
Strange cozenage ! none would live past years again, 
Yet all hope pleasure in what still remain, 
And from the dregs of life think to receive 
What the fresh sprightly running could not give. 
I'm tir'd of waiting for this chemic gold, 
Which fools us young, and beggars us when old. 

This is the celebrated Sarah, who, at the age of eighty-four, when 
she was told she must either submit to be blistered or to die, exclaimed 
in anger, and with a start in bed, " I won't be blistered, and I won't 
die!" 

The Duchess died, notwithstanding what she said, at Marlborough 
House, in 1744. 



THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE'S VAGARIES. 



WAS GEORGE II. AT THE BATTLE OF DETTINGEN ? 

Strangely contradictory are the accounts of the share of George II. in 
this decisive battle between the British, Hanoverian, and Hessian army, 
commanded by King George in person, and the Earl of Stair, on one 
side; and the French army, under Marshal Noailles, and the Duke of 
Grammont, on the other. Walpole tells us that " the King was in all 
the heat of the fire, and safe." Frederick the Great, in his Histoire de 
mon Temps, gives the following account of the King in the field of 
Dettingen : — " The King was on horseback and rode forward to recon- 
noitre the enemy ; his horse, frightened at the cannonading, ran away 
with his Majesty, and nearly carried him into the midst of the French 
lines; fortunately, one of his attendants succeeded in stopping him. 
George then abandoned his horse, and fought on foot at the head of his 
Hanoverian battalions. With his sword drawn, and his body placed 
in the attitude of a fencing master, who is about to make a lounge in 
carte, he continued to expose himself without flinching, to the fire of 
the enemy." — Lord Dover's Notes to Walpole 's Letters. 

Yet, elsewhere, Walpole has this precious piece of scandal about the 
matter: " Sir Watkin Williams, at the last Welsh races, convinced the 
whole principality (by reading a letter that affirmed it), that the King 
was not within two miles of the battle of Dettingen !" 



THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE S VAGARIES. 

There is scarcely any public man in our history of whose manners 
and conversation so many particulars have been preserved, as of the 
Duke of Newcastle, the well-known leader in the Pelham Administra- 
tion under George II. Single stories maybe unfounded or exaggerated. 
But all the stories about him, whether told by people who were per- 
petually seeing him in parliament, and attending his levees in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, or by Grub-street writers who had never more than a 
glimpse of his star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the 
same character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes 
and opinions as much as two human beings could differ. They kept 
quite different society. Walpole played at cards with countesses, and 
corresponded with ambassadors. Smollett passed his life surrounded by 
printers' devils and famished scribblers. Yet, Walpole's Duke and 
Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were both from one hand. 
Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his dressing-room, with his face covered 
with soap-suds, to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle 
pushes his way into the Duke of Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old 
nobleman's plasters. No man was so unmercifully satirized. But in 
truth he was himself a satire" ready made. All that the heart of the 
satirist does for other- men, nature nad done for him. Whatever was 
absurd about him, stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest 
of the character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait 



THE INSOLVENT EX-KING OF CORSICA. 189 

was a shuffling trot ; his utterance a rapid stutter ; he was always in a 
hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and 
hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of Justice Shallow. It 
was nonsense effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his 
ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well authenticated, some pro- 
bably invented at coffee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic: — "Oh 
— y es — yes— to be sure — Annapolis must be defended— troops must be 
sent to Annapolis — Pray where jg,. Annapolis ?" — " Cape Breton an 
island ? wonderful !— show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My 
dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King 
that Great Britain is an island." 

And this man was, during near thirty years, Secretary of State, and 
during near ten years, First Lord of the Treasury ! His large fortune, 
his strong hereditary connexions, his great parliamentary interest^ will 
not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal 
instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole 
heart and soul, without reserve, to one object. He was eaten up 
^fe^vambition. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his 
own. He was jealous of all his colleagues, and even of his own brother. 
Under the disguise of levity he was false beyond all example of political 
falsehood. All the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a 
driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together ; 
and he overreached them all round. — Lord Macaulay, on Walpoles 
Letters. 



THE INSOLVENT THEODORE, EX-KING OF CORSICA. 

This ill-fated gentleman, Theodore von Neuhoff, ex-king of Corsica, 
is chiefly remembered by his misfortunes in England, in the last century, 
and by his imprisonment here for debt ; indeed, debt seems to have been 
his weak point throughout his chequered life. Theodore was the son 
of a Westphalian gentleman of good family, and was born at Metz, 
about 1696. He entered the French army, which he soon quitted, and 
rambled as an adventurer over the greater part of Europe. He was 
thrown into prison for debt at Leghorn. On emerging from this con- 
finement, he joined the leaders of the Corsican insurgents, then striving 
to shake off the yoke of Genoa : for these services Neuhoff accepted the 
proffered sovereignty of the country, and in 1736, he was elected King 
by the general assembly. For some time he exercised all the arts of an 
independent sovereign, coining money, distributing patents of nobility, and 
instituting an order of knighthood. Failing in some military enterprises, 
his popularity soon diminished, when finding his position insecure, he 
made arrangements for the government in his absence, and quitted the 
island with the intention, as he asserted, of obtaining fresh succour. 
But he never resumed his sovereignty. After, visiting Italy, France, and 
Holland, he was arrested for debt at Amsterdam. Some Jews and foreign 
merchants settled in that city, procured his release, and furnished him 
vvith the means to equip an armament for the recovery of his dominions. 



jpo THE INSOLVENT EX-KING OF CORSICA. 

With this he appeared off Corsica in 1738, but failed to land ; a similarly- 
unsuccessful attempt was made in 1742. 

Theodore now proceeded to England, and on his arrival in London, 
met with great kindness and sympathy as an exiled monarch. Horace 
Walpole, who had taken considerable interest in Theodore's former for- 
tunes, received him kindly : he describes him as a comely, middle-sized 
man, very reverend, and affecting much dignity. On March 23rd, 1749, 
Walpole notes: " King Theodore [of Corsica] is here ; I am to drink 
coffee with him to-morrow at Lady Schaub's. I have curiosity to see 
him though I am not commonly fond of sights, but content myself with 
the oil-cloth picture of them that is hung out, and to which they seldom 
come up." What exquisite satire ! Additional mishaps, however, befel 
Theodore here, and he was sued for money which he had borrowed, and 
not being able to pay the debt he had to endure an imprisonment of 
some years' duration in the Kmg*s Bench Prison. Here, it is said, he 
used to affect a miserable display of regal state, sitting under a tattered 
canopy, and receiving visitors with great ceremony. Smollett has in- 
troduced a description of him in prison in his novel of Ferdinand Count 
Fathom. However, Walpole did not desert the ex -king. He wrote a 
paper in The World to promote a subscription for King Theodore in 
prison ; but he proved refractory and ungrateful. " His Majesty's 
character," says Walpole, " is so bad, that it only raised fifty pounds ; 
and though that was so much above his desert, it was so much below 
his expectation, that he sent a solicitor to threaten the printer with a pro- 
secution for having taken so much liberty with his name — take notice, 
too, that he had accepted the money ! Dodsley (the publisher) laughed 
at the lawyer ; but that did not lessen the dirty knavery. It would, 
indeed (says Walpole), have made an excellent suit ! — a printer prose- 
cuted, suppose, for having solicited and obtained charity for a man in 
prison, and that man not mentioned by his right name, but by a mock 
title, and the man himself not a native of the country ! — but I have done 
with countenancing kings!" However, the money proved of service, 
and enabled Theodore to obtain his release from prison under the In- 
solvent Debtors Act, having scheduled the kingdom of Corsica for the 
benefit of his creditors. The advertisement in the newspapers of the 
day announcing the opening of the subscription for the ex-sovereign had 
the prefix of " Date obolum Belisario," the words alleged to have been 
used by the general of Justinian, in his old age, to solicit alms. 

Theodore did not long survive his liberation. As soon as he was set 
at liberty, he took a chair, and went to the Portuguese Minister, but 
did not find him at home ; not having sixpence to pay the chairmen, 
he prevailed on them to carry him to a tailor he knew in Soho, and who 
received him kindly ; but he fell sick the next day, and died in three 
more ; though, Walpole says, Theodore died " somewhere in the liber- 
ties of the Fleet prison." The friend who had given shelter to this un- 
fortunate monarch, was himself so poor as to be unable to defray the 
cost of the ex-king's funeral. His remains were, therefore, about to 
be interred as a parish pauper, when one John Wright, an oilman in 
Compton Street, declared that he for once would pay the funeral expenses 



THE INSOLVENT EX-KING OF CORSICA. 191 



of a king, which he did, and the royal remains were laid in the church- 
yard of St. Anne's, Soho. 

Walpole, although he had been disgusted with the kingly conduct, 
paid the last honours. He writes to Sir Horace Mann, Sept. 29th, 1 757 : 
" I am putting up a stone, in St. Anne's Churchyard, for your old friend, 
King Theodore : in short, his history is too remarkable to let perish. 
You will laugh to hear that when I sent the inscription to the vestry for 
the approbation of the minister and churchwardens, they demurred, and 
took some days to consider whether they wou'd suffer him to be called 
King of Corsica. Happily, they have acknowledged his_ title ! Here is 
the inscription ; over it is a crown exactly copied from his coin : — 

NEAR THIS PLACE IS INTERRED 

THEODORE, KING OF CORSICA, 

WHO DIED IN THIS PARISH, DECEMBER II, 1756, 

IMMEDIATELY AFTER LEAVING 

THE KING'S BENCH PRISON, 

BY THE BENEFIT OF THE ACT OF INSOLVENCY J 

IN CONSEQUENCE OF WHICH 

HE REGISTERED THE KINGDOM OF CORSICA 

FOR THE USE OF HIS CREDITORS. 



The grave, great teacher, to a level brings 
Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings. 
But Theodore this moral learned ere dead : 
Fate poured its lessons on his living head, 
Bestowed a kingdom, and denied him bread. 

I think that at least it cannot be said of me, as it was of the Duke ot 
Buckingham* entombing Dryden, 

And help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve. 
I would have served him, if a king, even in a gaol, could he have been 
an honest man." 

Theodore left a son, Colonel Frederick, who came to a sad end. The 
old man walked from the coffee-house at Story's Gate to the porch at 
Westminster Abbey, and there shot himself. He had long been familiar 
to the inhabitants of London, and was distinguished by his eccentricities 
and gentlemanlike bearing. He had fulfilled many employments, and 
witnessed many strange incidents. One strange passage in his life was 
his dining at Dolly's chop-house, with Count Poniatowski, when neither 
the son of the late King of Corsica, nor he -who was afterwards King 
of Poland, had wherewith to settle the bill. Distress drove the Colonel 
\o commit suicide, and his remains rest by those of his father, in St. 
Anne's Churchyard, Soho. The Colonel's daughter married a Mr. 
Clarke, of the Dartmouth Custom-house. Four children were the 
' issue of this marriage. One of them, a daughter, was established in 
London, at the beginning of the present century, earning a modest liveli- 



* This is a mistake. Pope's accusation is not against Sheffield, Duke of 
Buckingham, but against Montague, Earl of Halifax. 



i 9 '2 GENERAL WOLFE. 

hood as an authoress and artist. The following is a copy ot the card of 
this industrious lady : 

ittss Clark, 

Granddaughter of the late Colonel Frederick, Son of Theodore, 

King of Corsica, 

Paints Likenesses in Miniature, from Two to Three Guineas, 

No. n6, New Bond Street. 

Hours of Attendance from Twelve. in : the Morning until Four. 

Dr. Doran's volume, entitled Monarchs retired from Business^ an 

amusing book, gossips further upon the insolvent ex-King. 



GENERAL WOLFE, AND THE EXPEDITION TO 
QUEBEC. 

When, in 17,^9, Pitt entrusted Wolfe with the expedition against 
Quebec, on the day preceding his embarkation, Pitt, desirous of giving 
his last verbal instructions, invited him to dinner at Hayes, Lord Temple 
being the only other guest. As the evening advanced, Wolfe, heated 
perhaps by his own aspiring thoughts, and the unwonted society of 
statesmen, broke forth in a strain of gasconade and bravado. He drew 
his sword and rapped the table with it ; he nourished it round the room, 
and he talked of the mighty things which that sword was to achieve. 
The two ministers sat aghast at an exhibition so unusual from any man 
of real sense and spirit. And when, at last, Wolfe had taken bis leave, and 
his carriage was heard to roll from the door, Pitt seemed for the moment 
shaken in the right opinion which his deliberate judgment had formed of 
Wolfe : he lifted up his eyes and arms, and exclaimed to Lord Temple : 
" Good God ! that I should have entrusted the fate of the country and 
of the administration to such hands !" This story was told by Lord 
Temple himself to the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville, the friend of 
Lord Mahon, who has inserted the anecdote in his History of England, 
vol. iv. Lord Temple also told Mr. Grenville, that on the evening in 
question, Wolfe had partaken most sparingly of wine, so that this ebul- 
lition could not have been the effect of any excess. The incident affords 
a striking proof how much a fault of manner may obscure and disparage 
high excellence of mind. Lord Mahon adds: " It confirms Wolfe's own 
avowal, that he was not seen to advantage in the common occurrences of 
life, and shows how shyness may, at intervals, rush, as it were, for refuge, 
into the opposite extreme ; but it should also lead us to view such de- 
fects of manner with indulgence, as proving that they may co-exist with 
the highest ability and the purest virtue." 

The death of Wolfe was a kind of military martyrdom. He had 
failed in several attempts against the French power in Canada, dreaded 
a court martial, and resolved, by a bold and original stroke, to justify 
the confidence of Pitt, or die. 

The want of a Life of Wolfe (says Mr. Robert Chambers) — a strange 
want, considering the glory which rests on the name — has caused some 



193 



ST. KA THARINE'S HOSPITAL, 

points regarding him to remain in doubt. It is doubtful, tor example, 
if he was in service in the campaign of the Duke of Cumberland in the 
north of Scotland in 1746. 



QUEEN CHARLOTTE AND ST. KATHARINE S 
HOSPITAL. 

On the east side of Regent's Park was rebuilt, in 1827, the Hospital of 
St. Katharine, on the demolition of the ancient hospital and church, by 
the Tower, for the site of St. Katharine's Docks. The foundation dates 
more than 700 years ago, in the reign of King Stephen, by Queen 
Matilda, confirmed by grants of succeeding sovereigns, and the revenues 
increased by Queen Eleanor and other royal donors. Provision was 
made for the master and priest; three brothers, priests; and three 
sisters ; all under obligation of perpetual chastity, and to " serve and 
minister before God," and do works of charity. Masses were to be 
said daily in the chapel, one for the souls of all the kings and queens 
of England. Provision was to be made for twenty poor men and ten 
poor women, to be increased with the means of the hospital, the income 
of which was, in the reign of Henry VIII., 365/. a year. In 1866 the 
income exceeded 7000/. a year; to be increased to nearly 15,000/., 
when the Tower house falls in, in the year 1900. The master receives 
nearly 1500/. a year, increased to 2000/. by the rent of his official re- 
sidence which, as he is non-resident, he lets. Each brother, by the 
Chancery decree, was to receive 300/. a year, now, with the emoluments, 
505/.; and each sister, 200/., now 371/.; 20 bedesmen and 20 bedes- 
women, 10/. each ; and a school for 33 boys and 18 girls; besides various 
payments of officers and attendants. It is suggested by a Report made 
in 1866, that the revenue might be made more productive, the hospital 
be restored to the east of London, and a collegiate church be there 
established. The Lord Chancellor visits the hospital with his assessors, 
and with judicial powers, the foundation being exempt from any juris- 
diction save that of the Sovereign in his Chancery. Four of such visitations 
have taken place in 600 years ; the last in 1823, by Lord Lyndhurst. 
The hospital buildings in Regent's Park have cost, for upholding and re- 
pairing, 32,088/., or little less than the original estimate for their re-con- 
struction. The officers of the institution are non-resident, and let their 
houses to augment their incomes ! 

The gift of the mastership of this hospital is described as the " prettiest 
bit of preferment " in the possession of a Queen Dowager, or the wife 
of a king of England. Soon after the period when Charlotte, Princess 
of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz became Queen Consort, she bestowed the ap- 
pointment on Colonel Greene, as the reward for the exercise of his office 
of love's emissary, when he went from court to court in Germany in 
search of a Princess qualified to share the throne of Great Britain vvith 
George III. The gallant soldier happened to meet at the salutary 
springs of Pyrmont, with the Princess Dowager of Strelitz, and her two 
daughters. His report of the younger of the latter is stated to have 

o 



'94 



HORNE TOOKE. 



been so favourable that it led to the offer of marriage subsequently made 
and promptly accepted. 

We quote from the papers of Mrs. Stuart the following account of the 
negotiations for the hand of Queen Charlotte : — ■ 

" Her Majesty described her life at Mecklenburgh as one of extreme 
retirement. She dressed only en robe de chambre, except on Sundays, on 
which days she put on her best gown, and after service, which was very 
long, took an airing in a coach-and-six, attended by guards and all the 
State she could muster. She had not ' dined ' at table at the period I am 
speaking of. One morning her eldest brother, of whom she seems to 
have stood in great awe, came to her room in company with the Duchess, 

her mother In a few minutes the folding doors flew open to the 

saloon, which she saw splendidly illuminated ; and then appeared a table, 
two cushions, and everything prepared for a wedding. Her brother 
then gave her his hand, and, leading her in, used his favourite expression,— 
' Allons, ne faites pas l" enfant, tu 'vas etre Reine d' dngfeterre.' " Mr. 
Drummond then advanced. They knelt down. The ceremony, what- 
ever it was, proceeded. She was laid on the sofa, upon which he laid 
his foot ; and they all embraced her, calling her ' La Reine.' " 



HORNE TOOKE'S POLITICAL PREDICTION. 

Home was the son of a poulterer in Newport Market : when asked 
by some of his schoolfellows what his father was, he is said to have re- 
plied " a Turkey merchant." The somewhat turbulent tone of the poli- 
tics of the son may have had something to do with the following cir- 
cumstance. As Mr. Home the father lived in Newport Street, he was 
a near neighbour to Frederick Prince of Wales, who then kept his court 
at Leicester House. Some of the officers of the household imagining 
that an outlet towards the Market would be extremely convenient to 
them and the inferior domestics, an adjoining wall was cut through, and 
a door placed in the opening, without any ceremony ; notwithstanding 
it was a palpable encroachment on, and violation of, the property of a 
private individual. In the midst of this operation, Mr. Home remon- 
strated, as the brick partition actually appertained to him, and the in- 
tended thoroughfare would lead through, and consequently depreciate, 
the value of his premises. The representations of the dealer in geese 
and turkeys, although backed by law and reason, were disregarded by 
those who abused the authority of a prince. On this, Home appealed 
from " the insolence of office " to the justice of his country ; and to the 
honour of our municipal jurisprudence, the event proved different from 
what it would have been, perhaps, in any other kingdom in Europe ; 
for a tradesman of Westminster triumphed over the heir apparent of the 
English crown, and orders were issued for the removal of the obnoxious 
door. It is not unreasonable to suppose that this successful start had 
its influence upon Tooke's aims in lire. 

Tooke was a man of remarkable sagacity, well acquainted with the 
state of England, and familiar with the course of public transactions in 



HORNE TOOKE. ^ 



all times and nations. But, inhis delight at the progress of the French Revo- 
lution, he boldly predicted that the same formidable process must be in- 
evitably undergone by this country. On a man of more unprejudiced 
mind, the whole aspect of the empire must have irresistibly impressed the 
directly opposite conviction; but HorneTooke wished, and therefore be- 
lieved. He was perfectly certain that the overthrow of ranks, at least, 
must come within a short period : " I trust," said he, in the utmost sin- 
cerity of familiar intercourse, " we shall live to see the day when the dis- 
tinctions of title will be abolished, and we may eat our mutton without 
being teased with such childish objects as ribbons, stars, and garters." 
He perpetually predicted the immediate downfall of the whole system 
of the country, and sneered habitually at the attempts to revive credit. 
On hearing of the bankruptcies frequent at that period, he could not 
dissemble his rebel gratification. " You are not going," he would say, 
"you are gone; it is not a slight hurt, but a mortal gangrene." Still, a 
very poor prophet he proved. He has been in his grave more than half 
a century, yet, how many of his predictions have come true ! 

What Tooke thought of the church may be seen in a letter of his to 
Wilkes, whose acquaintance he made at Paris in 1765, and to whom he 
thus wrote : — " You are now entering into correspondence with a parson, 
and I am greatly apprehensive lest that title should disgust ; but give 
me leave to assure you, I am not ordained a hypocrite. It is true I have 
suffered the infectious hand of a bishop to be waved over me, whose im- 
position, like the sop given to Judas, is only a signal for the devil to 
enter. I hope I have escaped the contagion ; and, if I have not, if you 
should at any time discover the black spot under the tongue, pray kindly 
assist me to conquer the prejudices of education and profession." 

Tooke was, upon one occasion, memorably outwitted by W ilkes, who 
was then sheriff of London and Middlesex. Tooke had challenged 
Wilkes, who sent him the following cutting reply : — " Sir, I do not think 
it my business to cut the throat of every desperado that may be tired of 
his life ; but as I am at present high sheriff of the City of London, it 
may happen that I shall shortly have an opportunity of attending you in 
my official capacity, in which case I will answer for it that you shall 
have no ground to complain of my endeavours to serve you." 

Tooke's audacity was irrepressible. In 1777 he was carried to the 
King's Bench to receive sentence for publishing his advertisement for 
subscriptions for the Americans. Lord Mansfield ordered him to prison, 
he cried out, " What, before sentence ?" Lord Mansfield was intimi- 
dated, and dismissed him. Some days after he was again brought into 
court, and the Attorney- General pleaded for his being set in the pillory, 
and even had the audacity to quote the Star Chamber, which he said 
had been laid aside for its rankness, implying, therefore, it was not totally 
without merit. Lord Mansfield was afraid, and would not venture the 
pillory, but sentenced Tooke to a fine and a year's imprisonment. 

For many years Tooke was the terror of judges, ministers of state, 
and all constituted authorities. When put on trial for his life (for trea- 
son), " so far from being moved by his dangerous position, he was never 
in more buoyant spirits. His wit and humour had often before been ex- 

o 2 



i 9 6 lord mayor beckford. 

hibited in courts of justice ; but never had they been so brilliant as on 
this occasion. Erskine had been at his request assigned to him as 
counsel ; but he himself undertook some of the most important duties 
of his advocate, cross-examining the witnesses for the Crown, objecting 
to evidence, and even arguing points of law. If his life had really been 
in jeopardy, such a course would have been perilous and rash in the 
highest degree ; but nobody in court, except, perhaps, the Attorney and 
Solicitor- General, thought there was the slightest chance of an adverse 
verdict. The prisoner led off the proceedings by a series of preliminary 
jokes, which were highly successful. "When placed in the dock he cast 
a glance up at the ventilators of the hall, shivered, and expressed a wish 
that their lordships would be so good as to get the business over quickly 
as he was afraid of catching cold. When arraigned, and asked by the 
officer of the court, in the usual form, how he would be tried ? he an- 
swered, ' I would be tried by God and my country — but ' and 

looked sarcastically round the court. Presently he made an application 
to be allowed a seat by his counsel ; and entered upon an amusing 
altercation with the judge, as to whether his request should be granted 
as an indulgence or as a right. The result was that he consented to take 
his place by the side of Erskine as a matter of favour. In the midst of 
the merriment occasioned by these sallies, the Solicitor-General opened 
the case for the crown." — Massey's History of England. 



LORD MAYOR BECKFORD'S MONUMENTAL SPEECH. 

It will be remembered by any one familiar with the history of the 
Corporation of London, that Alderman Beckford, in his second mayor- 
alty, in 1770, had the audacity to beard George III. as he sat 
upon his throne. The unconstitutional return at the Middlesex elec- 
tion of the candidate in the minority to be the sitting member, brought 
the Lord Mayor to the foot of the throne with a Remonstrance, to which 
the king replied : — " That he should have been wanting to the public, 
as well as to himself, if he had not expressed his dissatisfaction at the 
late Address." 

Horace Walpole thus notes the affair : — " The City carried a new 
remonstrance,* garnished with my lord's own ingredients, but much 
less hot than the former. The Court, however, was put to some 
confusion by my Lord Mayor, who, contrary to all form and pre- 
cedent, tacked a volunteer speech to the Remonstrance. It was 
wondrous loyal and respectful, but being an innovation, much dis- 
composed the solemnity. It is always usual to furnish a copy of what 



* The King is further known to have characterized this document as follows : 
" The remonstrance, according to the copy you have transmitted to me this 
day, has undoubtedly the marks of being the most violent, insolent, and licen- 
tious ever printed ; but when it is known how thin the meeting was that coun- 
tenanced the proceeding, and their indifference to it, a dry answer, rather 
bordering on contempt than anger, may not be improper." 



THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY. 



*97 



is said to the King, that he may be prepared with his answer. In this 
case, he was reduced to tuck up his train, jump from the throne, and 
take sanctuary in his closet, or answer extempore, which is not part of 
the royal trade ; or sit silent and have nothing to reply. This last was 
the event, and a position awkward enough in conscience.'' — Walpole to 
Sir Horace Mann, May 24, 1770. 

The citizens were so elated with Beckford's insulting conduct that 
they erected in the Guildhall, at some thousands' expense, a large mo- 
nument, in which is a life-size statue of Beckford addressing the King in 
the speech which is sculptured in red letters upon the pedestal whereon 
Beckford stands. 

Now, at the end of the Alderman's speech, in his copy of the City 
Addresses, Mr. Isaac Reed has inserted the following note : — " It is a 
curious fact, but a true one, that Beckford did not utter one syllable of 
this speech (on the monument). It was penned by John Hoi-ne Tooke, 
and by his art put on the records of the City, and on Beckford's statue; 
as he told me, Mr. Braithwaite, Mr. Sayers, &c., at the Athenian Club. 
Isaac Reed." There can be little doubt, that the worthy commentator 
and his friends were imposed upon. In the Chatham- Correspondence, vol. 
iii. p. 460, a letter from Sheriff Townsend to the Earl expressly states, 
that, with the exception of the words " and necessary " being left out 
before the word " revolution," the Lord Mayor's speech in the Public 
Advertiser of the preceding day, is verbatim the one delivered to the 
King. — (Wright — Note to Walpole.) 

Gifford says (Ben Jons on, vi. 481) that Beckford never uttered 
before the King one syllable of the speech upon his monument — 
and Gilford's statement is fully confirmed both by Isaac Reed 
(as above) and by Maltby, the friend of Rogers and Home Tooke. 
Beckford made a " Remonstrance Speech" to the King ; but the speech on 
Beckford's monument is the after speech written for Beckford by Home 
Tooke. — See Mitford's Gray and Mason Correspondence, pp. 438, 439, 
— Cunningham s Note to Walpole, v. 239. 



THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY. 

This was the name popularly given to the assemblage of citizens in 
Boston, Dec. 16, 1773, who met to carry out the non-importation re- 
solves of the colony ; and who, disguised as Indians, went on board 
three English ships which had just arrived in the harbour, and destroyed 
several hundred chests of tea. The British parliament retaliated by 
closing the port of Boston. — (Wheeler's Dictionary.) 

In Walpole's Last Journals, Jan. 18, 1774, we read: "This week 
came accounts of very riotous proceedings at Boston, where the mob 
broke into the ships that had brought teas, and threw above 340 chests 
into the sea." 

Upon this, Dr. Doran has an amusing note: "The Americans sig- 
nalized the early occurrence of the outbreak by using very loyal tunes, 
to which, however, they adapted words which were accounted very un- 



198 WILKES TRIUMPHANT] 

dutiful here. Thus, the air of ' Rule Britannia/ was chorused a hymn 
of liberty of many verses, from which I take one : 

Let us, your sons, by freedom warm'd, 

Your own example keep in view ; 
'Gainst tyranny be ever arm'd, 
Though we our tyrant find in you. 

Rule Britannia ; Britannia rule the waves ; 
But never, never make your children slaves ! 

" Whitehead, the laureate, whose grand nonsense was pronounced 
' insupportable ' by Johnson, took occasion of a temporary ' lull ' in 
the American excitement, a few months later than the period named in 
the text, to proclaim in a Birthday Ode the repentance of the colonists 
who incited to rebellion by putting new words to old tunes. Thus sang 
the son of the wealthy Cambridge baker : 

The prodigal again returns, 

And on his parent's neck reclines, 
With honest shame his bosom burns, 

And in his eye affection shines : 
Shines through tears at once that prove 
Grief and joy and filial love. 

" Before Whitehead could write another Birthday Ode to the King, 
the ' prodigal ' had struck his ' parent ' that blow at Lexington which 
seemed proof of anything but ' grief and joy and filial love.' And then, 
as Bancroft remarks of the opening of the conflict : ' Kings sat still in 
awe, and nations turned to watch the issue.' 

" It has been well said, ' The grain of corn which broke the camel's 
back, and in this instance caused the American War, was the imposi- 
tion of the Tea-duty at Boston.' " 



WILKES TRIUMPHANT ! 

In 1774, in the election of Lord Mayor, Wilkes entirely governed 
Bull, the actual Mayor, and made him decline the chair a second time. 
The Court on one side, and Alderman Townshend on the other, meant 
to gain or give the preference to any man over Wilkes. They set up 
two insignificant Aldermen, Eisdale and Kennet, as competitors, not 
having been able to prevail upon Sawbridge to stand for it again. Wilkes 
had regained him by premising to bring him into parliament for the 
City. Wilkes and Bull had the majority of hands, and after a poll 
which was demanded for Eisdale and Kennet, Wilkes and Bull were 
returned to the Court of Aldermen, who at last did declare Wilkes 
Lord Mayor. " Thus," says Walpole, " after so much persecution of 
the Court, after so many attempts on his life, after a long imprisonment 
in a gaol, after all his own crimes and indiscretions, did this extraor- 
dinary man, of more extraordinary fortune, attain the highest office in 
so grave and important a city as the capital of England, always reviving 
the more opposed and oppressed, and unableto shock fortune, or make her 
laugh at him, who laughed at every body and every thing. [In the 
.riumph of his heart Wilkes said, " if the King had sent me a pardon 



THE AMERICAN WAR. i 99 

and a thousand pounds to Paris, I should have accepted them, but I am 
obliged to him for not having ruined me." — DoranJ] 

" The duration of Wilkes' career was the most wonderful part of his 
history, Masaniello, a fisher-boy, attained to supreme power of Naples, 
but perished in three days. Rienzi governed Rome, but lost it by his 
folly. Sacheverel balanced the glory of Marlborough in the height of 
his victories, but never was heard of more. Wilkes was seen through, 
detected, yet gained ground ; and all the power of the crown, all the ma- 
lice of the Scots, all the abilities of Lord Mansfield, all the violence of 
Alderman Townshend, all the want of policy and parts in the Opposition, 
all the treachery of his own friends, could not demolish him. He equally 
baffled the King and parson Home, though both neglected no latitude to 
compass his ruin. It is in this his tenth year of his war on the Court 
that he gained so signal a victory ! " 



HOW THE AMERICAN WAR MIGHT HAVE BEEN 
PREVENTED. 
We see from Lord North's letters to George III. in 1778, that he wished 
to retire from office, and that he urged the King to form an Administra- 
tion of the Whigs combined under the presidency of Chatham. Had this 
been done it is not impossible that one of the darkest pages of our history 
might have taken a different colour. America, soothed by the return to 
power of her great advocate in the British Senate, might either have gone 
back to her allegiance or have separated from England without calling 
in our ancient foes to her support. The statesman of the Seven Years' 
War might have struck terror into the House of Bourbon ; the combined 
fleets of France and Spain might not have appeared in the unguarded 
Channel, nor the name of Yorktown been inscribed on our annals ; the 
Empire might have been spared dismemberment and years of disastrous 
war and misfortune. But George III. could not tolerate the Opposi- 
tion ; he hated Chatham with bitter hatred, and he refused peremptorily 
to form a Government that might have been the safeguard of England. 
In a letter to Lord North, the King does not object to see Lord Chatham 
in the Ministry ; " but," he adds, I solemnly declare nothing shall bring 

me personally to treat with Lord Chatham an opinion formed on 

an experience of a reign of now seventeen years, makes me resolved to run 
any personal risque rather than submit to Opposition. While I have no 
one object but to be of use to this country, it is impossible I can be de- 
serted, and the road opened to a set of men who certainly would make 
me a slave for the remainder of my days."* 



* The reign of George III. has been differently estimated during the last 
twenty years ; and there is more rough-speaking of contemporaneous events than, 
hitherto, as in the following instance : In the Court of Common Council, 
Sept. 17th, 1863, upon a motion to print all Addresses presented to the Throne 
from the Court, from 1778 to the present time, one of the Members opposed the 
resolution, observing that, "besides their literary defects, the papers in question 
were not creditable to them as statements of fact, seeing that one of them, for 
example, extolled the wisdom of George III., and another spoke of George IV. 



AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 



GEORGE III. AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

In the Men and Times of the American Revolution we find this graphic 
picture of " How George the Third appeared when he declared the 
Independence of the United States" : — 

" After waiting nearly two hours, the approach of the King was an- 
nounced by a tremendous roar of artillery. He entered by a small door 
on the left of the throne, and immediately seated himself upon the chair 
of state, in a graceful attitude, with his right foot resting upon a stool. 
He was clothed in royal robes. Apparently agitated, he drew from his 
pocket the scroll containing his speech. The Commons were sum- 
moned, and after the bustle of their entrance had subsided, he proceeded 
to read his speech. I was near the King, and watched with intense in- 
terest every tone of his voice, and every motion of his countenance. It 
was to me a moment of thrilling and dignified exultation. After some 
general and usual remarks, he continued : — ' I lost no time in giving the 
necessary orders to prohibit the further prosecution of offensive war 
upon the continent of North America. Adopting, as my inclination 
will always lead me to do, with decision and effect whatever I collect to 
be the sense of my Parliament and my people, I have pointed all my 
views and measures, in Europe, as in North America, to an entire and 
cordial reconciliation with the colonies. Finding it indispensable to the 
attainment of the object, I did not hesitate to go to the fall length of 
the powers vested in me, and offer to declare them.' — Here he paused, 
and was in evident agitation ; either embarrassed in reading his speech 
by the darkness of the room, or affected by a very natural emotion. In 
a moment he resumed : — 'and offer to declare them free and independent 
States. In thus admitting their separation from the Crown of these 
Kingdoms, I have sacrificed every consideration of my own to the wishes 
\and opinions of my people. I make it my humble and ardent prayer to 
Almighty God, that Great Britain may not feel the evils which might 
result from so great a dismemberment of the empire, and that America 
tnay be free from the calamities which have formerly proved, in the 
mother country, how essential monarchy is to the enjoyment of consti- 
tutional liberty. Religion, language, interests, and affections, may, and 
I hope will, yet prove a bond of permanent union between the two 
countries.' It is remarked that George III. is celebrated for reading 
his speeches in a distinct, free, and impressive manner. On this occasion 
he was evidently embarrassed ; he hesitated, choked, and executed the 
painful duties of the occasion with an ill grace, which does not belong 
to him." 



as 'our most religious and gracious sovereign.' " What can exceed the savage 
spirit of Mr. Landor's epigram : — 

George the First was always reckoned 
Vile — but viler George the Second ; 
And what mortal ever heard 
Any good of George the Third ? 
When from earth the Fourth descended, 
Heaven be praised ! the Georges ended. 



LORD RODNEY IN DIFFICULTIES. 201 



A PAGE OF POLITICAL HATE. 

Horace Walpole writes of the stormy period of January, 1776: "I 
who had seen every injustice heaped on my father by Jacobitism and 
faction, and who now saw the ruin of the country procured by Jaco- 
bite principles, did wish to turn every ait of party that was allowable on 
such guilty men. I had less delicacy than the Duke (of Richmond), 
and thought it meritorious to expose to clamour such Machiavels as 
Lord Mansfield, " qui sobrius ad evertendam Rempublicam accessit." 
Lord North was a pliant tool, without system or principle ; Lord 
Germaine, of desperate ambition and character ; Wedderburn a thorough 
knave ; Lord Gower a villain, capable of any crime ; Elliot, Jenkinson, 
Cornwall, mutes, that would have fixed the bowstring round the throat 
of the constitution. The subordinate crew to name is to stigmatize : 
they were Dr. Johnson, the pilloried Shebbeare; Sir John Dalrymple, 
and Macpherson ! The pious though unconscientious Lord Dartmouth 
had been laid aside, after bequeathing to the Administration his hypocrite 
secretaries, Wesley and Madan ; Lord Barrington remained to lie 
officially ; Lord Weymouth has acceded with all his insensibility to 
honour, and by acceding had given new edge to Thurlow, who was fit 
to execute whatever was to be done. Almost every Scot was ready to 
put his sickle to the harvest, and every Jacobite country gentleman ex- 
ulted in the prospect of reversing on the Whigs and Dissenters all their 
disappointments since the Revolution ; and they saw a Prince of the 
House of Brunswick ready to atone for all the negative hurt his family 
had done to their ancestors, and for all the good his ancestors and the 
benefactor of his family — King William — had done to Great Britain. 
There was still another body ready to profit by the restoration of Stuart 
views — the bishops and clergy. How deeply and joyfully they waded 
into a civil war on the Constitution and on Dissenters, let their votes, 
addresses, and zeal for the war declare ! This is a heavy picture ; but 
if any of the individuals mentioned above, or any of the denominations 
of men, come out whiter in the eyes of impartial posterity, let this page 
be registered as a page of the blackest calumny !" — Last Journals, vol. ii. 



LORD RODNEY IN DIFFICULTIES. 

Admiral Lord Rodney, it is well known, from heavy losses at the 
gaming table, became so involved as to avoid the importunities of his 
creditors, to seek refuge in France. During his residence in Paris, he 
occasionally wanted even small sums to supply the necessities of his 
family ; and it is a singular fact that he was indebted to the generosity 
of a French nobleman for the funds which enabled him to revisit Eng- 
land in 1778, and consequently to achieve his great victory over the 
French fleet under De Grasse, in T782. He was very sanguine of the 
success he should obtain over the enemy; and while resident in Cleve- 
land-row, St. James's, not only conceived, but delineated on paper the 



202 CONFERRING THE GARTER. 

naval manoeuvres of breaking or intersecting the line, to which he was 
mainly indebted for his brilliant victory over De Grasse. The French 
Government appear to have formed a high opinion of Rodney's profes- 
sional talent, and from the persuasion, apparently, that his pecuniary 
difficulties rendered him open to temptation, went so far as to offer him, 
through the Due de Biron, a post of high rank in the French navy. His 
reply was characteristic : " Monsieur le Due, it is true that my distresses 
have driven me from my country, but no temptation can estrange me 
from her service; had this offer been voluntary on your part I should 
have considered it an insult, but I am glad that it proceeds from a source 
that can do no wrong." About the same time, when the Due de 
Chartres informed him that he was likely to be appointed to the com- 
mand of the French fleet, which was to be opposed to the squadron 
under Admiral Keppel, and inquired his opinion as to the probable re- 
sult of an engagement between the two fleets ; "My opinion," he 
said, " is, that Keppel will carry your Highness home with him to teach 
you English." 

On his return to England Rodney's embarrassments so disgusted him 
with life that, in a letter to a friend, he expressed a melancholy regret 
that, in his great action with De Grasse, a cannon ball had not struck off 
his head. 

Lord Rodney directed in person every manoeuvre, and preserved, 
during the twelve hours that the action lasted, the utmost presence or 
mind. He never quitted the quarter-deck for a minute, nor took any 
refreshment except the support he derived from a lemon, which he held 
constantly in his hand, and applied frequently to his lips. Burke said 
of this achievement, that " the great national benefit performed by the 
English admiral, obliterated his errors ; and, like the laurel-crown de- 
creed by the Roman Senate to Julius Csesar, covered, as well as con- 
cealed, his baldness." 



CONFERRING THE GARTER. 

Two of our Sovereigns appear to have shown ill manners and temper 
in conferring the insignia and decorations of this noble order. George II., 
who strongly disliked Lord Temple, " Squire Gawkey," as he 
was nicknamed, was compelled by political arrangements, very re- 
pugnant to his feelings, to invest that nobleman with the Order of the 
Garter, when the King took so little pains to conceal his aversion both 
to the individual and to the act, that, instead of placing the riband deco- 
rously over the shoulder of the new knight, his Majesty, averting his 
head, and muttering indistinctly some expressions of dissatisfaction, threw 
the riband across him, and turned his back at the same instant in the 
rudest manner. George III. exerted more restraint over his passions 
than did his grandfather, yet even he could be ill-tempered. When 
he invested the Marquis Camden with the Garter, he showed much ill- 
humour in his countenance and manner. However, as he knew the 
ceremony must be performed, Mr. Pitt having pertinaciously insisted 



PITT, AS A WAR MINISTER. 203 

upon it, the King took the riband in his hand, and turning to the Duke 
of Dorset, the assistant knight-companion, before the new knight ap- 
proached, asked him if he knew Lord Camden's Christian name. The 
duke, after inquiring, informed him that it was John Jefferies. " What, 
what !" said the King, " John Jefferies ! the first Knight of the Garter] 
E believe, that was ever called John Jefferies ;" the King not considering 
his descent sufficiently illustrious. 

In 1782, at the time of Lord North's resignation, there were on the 
King's table four Garters unappropriated, which the new ministers 
naturally considered as lawful plunder. One only fell to the share of 
the Sovereign, which he was allowed, though not without some diffi- 
culty, to confer on his third son, Prince William Henry, afterwards 
William IV. The Duke of Devonshire, as head of the Whig party, 
was invested with one blue riband, and the Duke of Richmond with 
another. Lord Shelburne took for himself, as was to be expected, the 
fourth Garter. At the investment never did three men receive the Order 
in so dissimilar and characteristic a manner. The Duke of Devonshire 
advanced up to the Sovereign, with his phlegmatic, cold, and awkward 
air, like a clown. Lord Shelburne came forward, bowing on all sides, 
and fawning like a courtier. The Duke of Richmond presented himself 
easy, unembarrassed, and with dignity, like a gentleman. 



PITT, AS A WAR MINISTER. 

Mr. Goldwin Smith, in his lecture upon the Heaven-born statesman, 
thus notices his deficiency as a War Minister. " He had not his 
father's eye for men. He was open to a worse censure than that of 
failing to distinguish merit. When he allowed himself to be made 
Minister by an unconstitutional use of the king's personal influence he 
had sold himself to the fiend, and the fiend did not fail to exact the 
bond. Twice Pitt had the criminal weakness to gratify the king's per- 
sonal wishes by intrusting the safety of English armies and the honour 
of England to the incompetent hands of the young Duke of York. 
But could promotion by merit be expected at the hands of Governments 
whose essence was privilege ? It was against promotion by merit that 
they were fighting. To accept it would have been to accept the Revo- 
lution. Pitt did not know why he had gone to war ; therefore, when 
he found himself abandoned by most of his allies, the rest requiring sub- 
sidies to drag them into the field,— the cause of Europe, as it was called, 
renounced by Europe itself, everything going ill, and no prospect of 
amendment,- -he did not know how or on what terms to make peace. 
This was called his firmness. At last, in tSot, peace, and an ignominious 
peace, was inevitable, and Pitt retired. But he came into power again to 
conduct a war, and this time a necessary war, for with the perfidy and 
rapine of Bonaparte no peace was possible. The struggle with him was 
a struggle for the independence of all nations against the armed and 
disciplined hordes of a conqueror as cruel and as barbarous as Attila. 
The lecturer looked with pride upon the fortitude and constancy which 



204 PITT AND THE PITTITES. 

England displayed in the contest with this universal tyrant. The position 
in which it left her at its close was fairly won, though she must now 
be content to retire from the temporary supremacy, and fall back into 
her place as one of the community of nations. But Pitt was still destined 
to fail as a War Minister. Trafalgar was soon cancelled by Austerlitz. 
' How I leave my country !' were Pitt's last words, and, perhaps his 
truest epitaph. They well expressed the anguish of a patriot who had 
wrecked his country." 

The reviewer in The Times observes : "No greater theoretical or 
practical financier than Pitt has yet appeared in England ; and, even as 
a War Minister, Pitt's powers have been too often undervalued by recent 
critics. The coalitions which he formed provided the only chance of 
destroying the power of Napoleon ; and it was not the fault of the 
English Minister that the French General and his soldiers were for a 
time invincible. It may be true that 'Trafalgar was cancelled by Aus- 
terlitz,' but in the course of twenty months between his return to power 
and his death, Pitt had relieved England from the immediate risk of in- 
vasion, and he had formed the combinations which compelled Napoleon 
to fight for his existence at Austerlitz, at Jena, at Eylau, and at Fried- 
land. A statesman contending with a gigantic enemy can do no more 
than bring armies into the field, and Pitt accomplished his portion of the 
common task. The French understand better than Liberal English com- 
mentators on history the character and achievements of the minister, who 
seems to M, Thiers, as to M. Louis Blanc, to have been the deadliest 
enemy of the Revolution and the Empire. That he was able for so 
'many years to wield the whole force of the nation, is a proof not only 
of the ascendancy of his eloquence and of his character, but also of the 
soundness of institutions, which were, undoubtedly, encumbered with 
many anomalies." 

+ 

PITT AND THE PITTITES. 

The memory of Pitt has been assailed, times innumerable, often justly, 
often unjustly ; but it has suffered much less from his assailants than 
from his eulogists. For during many years, his name was the rallying 
cry of a class of men with whom, at one of those terrible conjunctures 
which confound all ordinary distinctions, he was accidentally and tem- 
porarily connected ; but to whom on almost all great questions of prin- 
ciple he was diametrically opposed. The haters of Parliamentary Re- 
form called themselves Pittites, not choosing to remember that Pitt 
made three motions for Parliamentary Reform, and that, though he 
thought that such a reform could not safely be made. While the passions 
excited by the French Revolution were raging, he never uttered a word 
indicating that he should not be prepared at a more convenient season 
to bring the question forward a fourth time. The toast of the Pro- 
testant Ascendancy was drank on Pitt's birthday by a set of Pittites 
who could not but be aware that Pitt had resigned his office because he 
could not cany Catholic Emancipation. The defenders of the Test 
Act called themselves Pittites, though they could not be ignorant that 



WHAT DROVE GEORGE III. MAD. 205 

Pitt had laid before George III. unanswerable reasons for abolishing 
the Test Act. The enemies of Free Trade called themselves Pittites, 
though Pitt was far more deeply imbued with the doctrines of Adam 
Smith, than either Fox or Grey. The very negro-drivers invoked the 
name of Pitt, whose eloquence was never more conspicuously displayed 
than when he spoke of the wrongs of the negro. This mythical Pitt 
who resembles the genuine Pitt as little as the Charlemagne of Ariosto 
resembles the Charlemagne of Eginhard, has had his day. History will 
vindicate the real man from calumny disguised under the semblance of 
adulation, and will exhibit him as what he was, a minister of great 
talents, honest intentions, and liberal opinions ; pre-eminently qualified 
intellectually and morally, for the part of a Parliamentary leader, and 
capable of administering with prudence and moderation the government 
of a prosperous and tranquil country, but unequal to surprising and 
terrible emergencies, and liable in such emergencies to err grievously, 
both on the side of weakness and on the side of violence.— Macaulay. 

Pitt died on the 25th of January, the 25th anniversary of the day on 
which he first took his seat in Parliament. He was in his 47th year, and 
had been, during nineteen years, First Lord of the Treasury, and un- 
disputed chief of the Administration. 

There was long a doubt as to the last words of Mr. Pitt. Earl Stan- 
hope, in his Life of the great minister (1862), gave them from a 
manuscript left by his lordship's uncle, the Hon. James H. Stanhope, as 
" Oh my country ! how I love my country !" But, upon re-examina- 
tion of the MS., a somewhat obscure one, no doubt was left in Lord 
Stanhope's mind that the word " love " was a mistake for " leave." 
The expression, as in this manner finally authenticated, is in perfect and 
most sad conformity with the state of the national affairs at the time 
when Mr. Pitt was approaching his end. A new coalition, which 
England had, with great difficulty and vast expense, formed against 
Napoleon, had been dashed to pieces by the prostration of Austria ; and 
Pitt must have had the idea in his mind that hardly now a stay re- 
mained. 



WHAT DROVE GEORGE III. MAD. 

How strange is it to find, upon a close examination of the biography 
of Mr. Pitt, that early in the present century, the mention of the mea- 
sure which twenty-eight years later became the law of the land, had the 
effect of disturbing the reason of the sovereign : yet so it was. " Pitt 
had become in a manner pledged on the union of the Irish with the 
British Legislature, to provide for what has since been called the Emanci- 
pation of the Catholics. The probability is, that from the first he had 
underrated the King's repugnance to the measure ; but it has been sug- 
gested that had there been no treachery in the camp, and had he been 
the first to broach the subject to George III., he might have had his own 
way, and carried the acquiescence of the king. As it was, Lord Lough- 
borough had, contrary to all rule, made the King aware of Pitt's inten- 
tions, and had, for his own selfish purposes sought to strengthen his 



206 Vi/HAT DROVE GEORGE TIL MAD. 

Majesty in a most absurd view of his duty. So it happened that instead 
of Pitt breaking the subject to the King, the King, in a fit of impatience, 
breaks out upon Dundas. Referring to Lord Castlereagh, who had re- 
cently come from Dublin, he said, " What is it that this young lord has 
brought over which they are going to throw at my head ? . . . The 
most Jacobinical thing I ever heard of! I shall reckon any man my per- 
sonal enemy who proposes any such measure." " Your Majesty," re- 
plied Dundas, " will find among those who are friendly to that measure 
some whom you never supposed to be your enemies." The time for 
action had evidently come: it was necessary for Pitt to break the 
silence ; he wrote to the King explaining his views, and pointing out that 
if they were not acceptable it would be necessary for him to resign. Pitt 
did resign ; his successor was appointed, but before the formal transfer 
of office could take place, the King went mad, and it was this Catholic 
question that drove him mad. He recovered in a fortnight and told his 
physician to write to Pitt, " Tell him I am now quite well — quite re- 
covered from my illness ; but what has he not to answer for who is the 
cause of my having been ill at all ?" Pitt was deeply touched, and at 
once conveyed an assurance to the King, through the same physician, 
that never again during the King's reign would he bring forward the 
Catholic question. Previous to that illness Pitt had two clear alternatives 
before him — " either I shall relieve the Catholics , or I shall resign," — 
and he resigned accordingly. But after the illness all was changed. Any 
attempt to relieve the Catholics would incur the risk of the King's de- 
rangement. There was but a choice of evils, and it was natural that 
Fitt should regard it as the lesser evil to postpone indefinitely the settle- 
ment of the Catholic claims, which, nevertheless, he regarded as of the 
utmost importance. 

During the latter part of the time, George III., notwithstanding the 
continuance of some delusions, was perfectly competent to understand 
the state of affairs, and there was every reason to suppose that he would 
become convalescent before his son could take his seat as Regent. For 
the remainder of his reign his Ministers and his subjects regarded his oc- 
casional insanity as one of the ordinary contingencies of the Constitution. 
Mr. Pitt, during his second Administration, sometimes obtained from 
the physicians a written certificate of the King's competence before he 
entered his presence for the transaction of business. Who would have 
supposed forty years ago that a day was coming when a Frenchman 
would unhesitatingly write the apology — we had almost said the 
panegyric — of William Pitt — " ce Pitt," as the members of the Jacobin 
Club used to call him ? And yet such is the case. By way of preface 
to a translation of Lord Stanhope's Life of Pitt, M. Guizot has given a 
very good estimate both of the political relation in which England stands 
to France, and also of the character of the great British statesman. He 
conclusively shows that Pitt was positively opposed to a war with France, 
and did all he could to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. 



LORD NELSON. 207 



CHARACTER OF LORD NELSON. 

The following character of our great naval hero, as sketched by Henry- 
Edward 4th and last Lord Holland, the diplomatist, differs, in many- 
respects, from the popular estimate of Nelson : — 

" Of his person there are many representations, and will be nearly as 
many descriptions. It was insignificant, and announced none of the 
qualities of a commander ; though his innumerable scars (for he had 
scarcely ever been in action without receiving a wound), the loss of an 
eye, and of an arm, and a weather-beaten countenance, marked the hard 
service he had seen, and gave him, at the age of forty-two, all the appear- 
ance of a veteran. His greatness (for who shall gainsay the greatness of 
the conqueror of Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar ?) is a strong in- 
stance of the superiority of the heart over the head, and no slight proof 
that a warm imagination is a more necessary ingredient in the composi- 
tion of an hero than a sound understanding. ... It is perhaps no ill 
office to the memory of Nelson to correct any favourable opinion that 
may be entertained of his understanding ; for what justification can be 
found for one period of his public life, if he was aware and capable of 
judging of the nature of the transactions in which he was engaged ? But 
his violation of good faith and justice at Naples, which, if he were con- 
sidered as a man of sense, would tarnish all his glories, and hand him 
down to posterity as a perfidious politician, a bloody and relentless per- 
secutor, is to be accounted for and can alone be palliated by the weak- 
ness of his understanding, by the ascendancy which an artful and worth- 
less woman had obtained over a mind unversed in politics and ignorant 
of the world ; and by the general violence with which the calamities and 
intolerance of the times had infected men less susceptible of delusion 
and bigotry than himself." 

For some of the worst points in the disgraceful proceedings at Naples 
a partial apology is offered :— " That the base and wicked conduct of 
Lady Hamilton was known to him at the time to its full extent, is im- 
possible. She received money from individuals to save the lives of them- 
selves or their relations ; and in the instance of a nephew of Duke Elzi, 
if not in more, she suffered the victims to perish without returning the 
bribe. That these transactions were subsequently known to Nelson I 
fear cannot be disputed ; for he generously repaid such sums from the 
income of the Duchy of Bronte, and made all the reparation in his 
power to the injured, though he had not the resolution and virtue to 
expose, or to separate himself from, the person who committed the in- 
justice. Such were the real stains in the character of Nelson ; for his 
vanity, often ridiculous, was utterly unmixed with pride, arrogance, ill- 
nature, or jealousy. It was rather a diverting proof of his simplicity 
than a dangerous or offensive quality in his intercourse with others. He 
smiled with complacency when Lady Hamilton introduced him by the 
name of 'our saviour ;' he would press her to sing the most fulsome 
couplets to his honour ; and he acknowledged with the utmost naivete, 
that his preference for her society to Lady Nelson's arose from the warm 



208 FRENCH COLOURS TAKEN AT WATERLOO. 

praises she bestowed upon him, after which the congratulations of his 
wife were, he said, cold, flat, and insipid. To his visitors he displayed, 
with the greatest complacency, his own portraits and busts laden with 
inscriptions, and decorated with laurels, &c." 



FRENCH COLOURS TAKEN AT WATERLOO. 

Untrustworthiness in an historian was, perhaps, never more directly 
proved than by a passage in the 20th volume of the Histoire du Consulat 
et de V Empire, by M. Thiers, who writes, in page 208 : — 

" Les Ecossais Gris enlevent d'un cote le drapeau du io5ieme (Di- 
vision Alix), et de l'autre celui du 45ieme (Division Marcoquet)." 

M. Thiers thus admits the capture of two Eagles by the British dra- 
goons. Page 209 states that — 

" Un marechal de logis des Landers, nomme Urban, se precipitant 
dans la melee, fait prisonnier le chef des Dragons, le brave Ponsonby. 
Les Ecossais s'efforcant de delivrer leur general, Urban le renverse, mort 
a ses pieds ; puis, menace par plusieurs dragons, il va droit a l'un d'eux 
qui tenait le drapeau du 45ieme, le demonte d'un coup de lance, le tue 
d'un second coup, lui enleve le drapeau, se debarrasse en le tuant encore 
d'un autre Ecossais qui le serrait de pres, et revient tout couvert de 
sang, porter a son colonel le trophee qu'il avait si glorieusement re- 
conquis." 

In page 252 M. Thiers reiterates his assertion as to the capture of this 
Eagle : — 

" Chose remarquable, nous n'avions perdu qu'un drapeau, car le sous- 
officier de Landers Urban avait reconquis celui du 45ieme, l'un des deux 
pris du corps d'Erlon." 

In the teeth of these statements it is proved that in the Chapel of the 
Royal Hospital at Chelsea, among 13 Eagles captured from the French, 
are the above two which were taken at Waterloo, and are suspended 
from the walls right and left cf the altar. The one on the left bears the 
following inscription :— " L'Empereur Napoleon au 45ieme Regiment 
d'Infanterie de Ligne ;" the other is inscribed, " L'Empereur Napoleon 
d'Infanterie de Ligne." Both colours are emblazoned with the au 
1 o.njieme Regiment names of Marengo, Jena, Eylau, Friedland, Eckmuhl, 
and other victories. 

In the Times next appeared the following evidence: " We are requested 
to state, by the best authority, that the Eagle of the 105th Regiment of 
the Line was taken from the French, at Waterloo, by the Royal Dra- 
goons ; that of the 45th by the Scots Greys." 

To the Kentish Gazette of 1815 was communicated this evidence, 
written within ten days of the battle of Waterloo : — 

"Canterbury, Friday, June 23rd, 1815. 
(London, Thursday Night.) 
" .... At three o'clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, the Hon. 
Major Percy, aide-de-camp to our illustrious hero, accompanied by 



FRENCH COLOURS TAKEN AT WATERLOO. 209 

Captain White, of the navy, landed from a row-boat at Broadstairs, 
with the despatches of this important event, a copy of which is given in 
the preceding columns, and having also under their charge the eagles 
and standards of two French regiments of infantry, with which they im- 
mediately proceeded in a chaise and four to the metropolis. These em- 
blems of victory belonged to the 45th and 104th Regiments, and were 
superbly gilt, and ornamented with broad gold fringe. That of the 45th 
was inscribed with the names of Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, Eylau, 
Friedland, &c, being the battles in which this regiment, called the In- 
vincible, had signalized itself. The other was a present from the Em- 
press Louisa to the 104th. One was much defaced with blood and dirt, 
as if it had been struggled for, and the eagle was also broken off from the 
pole, as if from the cut of a sabre, but it was nevertheless preserved." 
[For 104th read 105th.] 

Subjoined is an extract from a letter in the same year from Sergeant 
Ewart, of the Scots Greys, to his brother in Ayr, dated Rouen, 16th 
of August, 1S15. — Kentish Gazette, October 2 : — 

" .... Our brigade was ordered to advance to the support of our 
brave fellows, and which we certainly did in style. We charged through 
two of their columns, each about 5000. It was in the first charge I 
took the eagle from the enemy ; he and I had a very hard contest for it. 
He thrust for my groin ; I parried it off and cut him through the head; 
after which I was attacked by one of their Lancers, who threw his lance 
at me, but missed the mark by my throwing it off with my sword by my 
right side ; then I cut him from the chin upwards, which cut went 
through his teeth. Next I was attacked by a foot soldier, who after 
firing at me charged me with his bayonet, but he very soon lost the 
combat, for I parried it and cut him down through the head ; so that 
finished the contest for the eagle. After which I presumed to follow 
my comrades, eagle and all, but was stopped by the General, saying to 
me, — ' You brave fellow, take that to the rear. You have done enough 
till you get quit of it ;' which I was obliged to do, but with great reluc- 
tance. I retired to a height and stood there for upwards of an hour, 
wnich gave me a general view of the field, but I cannot express the sight 
I beheld — the bodies of my brave comrades were lying so thick upon 
the field that it was scarcely possible to pass, and horses innumerable. I 
took the eagle into Brussels amid the acclamations of the thousands of 
spectators that saw it." 

The etymology and grammar of the above are exactly the same as in 
the original. 

One of the very few remaining men of the Scots Greys who were at 
Waterloo, wrote, in 1862, as follows: — 

" I, Peter Swan, late Sergeant of the Scots Greys, do hereby declare, 
on the honour of a soldier, that I was present at the battle of Waterloo 
when the standard of the 45th French Regiment was taken by my corps, 
and I declare the following to be true : — 

" I belonged to the centre squadron and charged with the corps. The 
flag in question, and the largest of the two hanging in Chelsea Hospital, 

P 



2 jo FRENCH COLOURS TAKEN AT WATERLOO. 

was taken in the first instance, in the first charge, by a trumpeter named 
Hutchinson, who, with his horse, was immediately killed ; whereupon 
Ewart, then a corporal, seized the colour, and having fought hard for it, 
kept it. I did not see him take the standard, nor fight for it (and he 
had tough work to keep it), as I had enough to do to mind myself, but 
on coming out of action after the first charge, Captain Cheency, the 
senior officer living of the Scots Greys, ordered Captain Fenton, of my 
troop, to take four good men and true with him and carry the standard 
to Brussels, which I saw them do at about twelve or one o'clock in the 
day, and the standard was never again in the hands of the French. 

" Peter Swan, D Troop, Scots Greys. 
" Weston-common, near Southampton, Aug. 29th." 

A correspondent of the Times, who served as a subaltern in the Scots 
Greys at the battle of Waterloo, during the whole of the day, 
asserts, that the standard of the 45th French Regiment was taken by 
Sergeant Ewart ; that it never left his hands until he deposited it at 
Brussels on the afternoon of the same day ; and that no standard was 
picked up by the Scots Greys from the ground after the French retreat, 
nor does the writer believe it possible that they would have deserted 
their standard in such a manner. 

Mr. Gutteridge, of Brighton, who was in Brussels during the battle, 
on the afternoon of the 18th of June, saw a large number of prisoners 
(3000 or 4000) being escorted in by the Scots Greys and 5th Dragoon 
Guards ; the writer then saw the two colours of the 45th and 1 05th 
Regiments, and was allowed to take hold of them by the corners ; and 
he recollects distinctly reading the names of the battles they had been 
engaged in inscribed on them. They were — Austerlitz, Friedland, Jena, 
Marengo, &c. 

Here is another instance of the mendacity of the same historian ; de- 
scribing, be it remembered, an event of his own time — the Duke of 
Wellington's presence at Quatre Bras — M. Thiers states: — "He 
(Marshal Ney) thought .... that the advance guard of Lord 
Wellington, which he saw before him, would suddenly fold up like a 
curtain, and discover soon the English army itself. .... He paused 
before the open route of Quatre Bras — that is to say, before the fortune 
of France, which was there, and which, by extending his hand, he might 
infallibly have seized ! What had he at this moment before him ! 
Exactly what he saw, and nothing more. In effect, the Duke of 
Wellington remaining at Brussels, and only having received vague news 
on that morning, had not yet ordered anything." 

In contradiction of the above, Major-General Fitzmaurice (late of 
the Rifle Brigade), writes to the Times, December 29, 1863: — 

"I send you a short narrative of what I saw and heard on the 16th 
of June (the day in question), and hope that you will insert it in your 
columns. Having the honour of commanding in the absence of my 
captain, Brevet-Major Leach (detained on other business at Brussels), 
the 1 st company of the 1st battalion of the old 95th, I descried at about 
2 p.m., from the point where the four roads meet at Quatre Bras, the 



GEORGE IV. AND HIS QUEEN. 



Duke of Wellington between us and the French returning from re- 
connoitering their advance. Shortly after he rode up to me, calling 
out ' Where is Barnard?' (the late Sir Andrew). I instantly passed the 
word to the rear, and on Sir Andrew Barnard galloping up, the Duke 
said, pointing to a detached wood on our left, ' Barnard, these fellows 
are coming on, you must stop them by throwing yourself into that 
wood,' Sir Andrew then gave me the order to do this, ' and amuse 
them,' until he should come up with the rest of the battalion, and as I 
moved rapidly off, the Duke called out to me to go round a knoll, by 
which I should be obscured from the enemy. 

"This incident proves not only that the Duke was present at an early 
hour at Quatre Bras, but also that, with the fate of Europe depending 
upon him, he could with his usual coolness give orders for the safe ad- 
vance of a company of skirmishers." 



GEORGE IV. AND HIS QUEEN. 

Immediately after the death of George III., Queen Caroline, although 
with more than suspicion hanging over her head, hastened, to England 
to claim her right to the throne of a man who could hardly be consi- 
dered her husband. His estrangement from her, the aversion he had 
manifested from the first moment of their ill-assorted marriage, was the 
only excuse the unfortunate woman could plead for her errors. The 
announcement of her journey to England and the news of her demands 
for a regal reception caused a great sensation. " Great bets," says Lord 
Eldon, " are laid about it. Some people have taken 50 guineas, under- 
taking in lieu of them to pay a guinea a day till she comes." 50,000/. 
a year were offered if she would consent to play the Queen of England 
at some continental court. She in her turn demanded a palace in London, 
a frigate, and the restoration of her name to the church service. Nothing 
short of the prayers of the faithful would satisfy her craving for worldly 
distinction. Mr. Wilberforce, with characteristic indulgence, admired 
her for her spirit, though he feared she had been " very profligate." Her 
arrival in London was the signal for a popular ovation, " more out of 
hatred to the king than out of regard for her." For many weeks the 
stout lady in the hat and feathers was the favourite of the populace, and 
Alderman Wood's house, No. 77, South Audley-street, where she had 
taken up her quarters, was at all hours of the day surrounded by a mob 
of noisy king-haters. Mr. Wilberforce, in a letter to Hannah More, 
recounts their proceedings : " A most shabby assemblage of quite the 
lowest of the people, who every now and then kept calling out ' Queen ! 
Queen !' and several times, once in about a quarter of an hour, she came 
out of one window of a balcony, and Alderman Wood at the other." 
At which the crowd cheered prodigiously. When her trial was decided 
upon, this misguided woman, determined to brazen it out at all hazards, 
threatened to come daily to Westminster Hall in " a coach and six in 
high style" and she also insisted on being present at the coronation. 
" She has written to the king," says Mr. Th. Grenville 3 " when and in 

P2 



312 SIX ROBERT WILSON. 

what dress she should appear at the coronation. I presume the answer 
will be: in a white sheet, in the middle aisle of the Abbey." 

The strictest orders were given for her exclusion, but still she came, 
and among the extraordinary and disgraceful scenes of the time is that 
of a Queen of England "trying every door of the Abbey and the Hall." 
She at length withdrew. 

" It is worthy of remark that no diary or journal published since 
182 1 throws any new light upon the question of the guilt or innocence 
of the Queen : but it is significant that Lord Grenville, who had excul- 
pated her in 1806 upon the occasion of the Delicate Investigation, seems 
to have had no doubt as to her misconduct in 1821, and both voted 
and spoke against her on the second reading of the Bill. This is not the 
place to discuss a nasty personal subject, with regard to which, we sup- 
pose, most historians will not differ ; but whatever may have been the 
sins of Caroline of Brunswick, the behaviour of George IV. towards 
her had been of such a kind that, in our judgment, political considera- 
tions alone can account for the support which the majority of the 
House of Lords afforded him at the trial. In fact, it is evident from 
many sources, that the real issue in the case was lost sight of by all par- 
ties ; and, if it may be laid to the charge of the people that they backed 
the Queen solely in the interest of revolution, it is equally certain that 
the mass of the aristocracy who sided with the King, only did so because 
they thought that the constitution was in danger." — Saturday Review. 



SIR ROBERT WILSON AS A POLITICIAN. 

Although Wilson hated Buonaparte as an oppressor generally, and as 
the treacherous assassin of the Duke d'Enghien in particular, he disap- 
proved of his forcible dethronement. He saw that it would lead to the 
extinction of Poland and Italy, the restoration of a cruel Papal domina- 
tion, and to increase of power for evil on the part of Austria. Of the 
ultimate downfall of Napoleon, he was sure ; but he thought its earlier 
advent dearly purchased by a restoration of the old feudal tyrannies. 
His views on a particular part of this question, which still vexes mankind, 
will be read with interest : — 

' ' I much fear that the re-establishment of the Pope will have more fatal power 
to depress the liberties of Italy than all the efforts of enlightened patriots can 
counteract. I have expressed to Lord William Bentinck my fears on that 
subject, as he is one of His Holiness's great allies. 'My friends,' I wrote, 
' are encroaching by sap, but I much fear that your friend, the Pope, will use 
all the power of St. Peter's to enforce the maxim of the Church — ' Divide, and 
Govern.' It is on that point that you and I differ most. I regard the Papal 
throne as incompatible with Italian nationalization and freedom. Beware how 
you extend its influence and extol its benefits to mankind. You never can hope 
to make that government philosophical or flexible to the times. Monarchs are 
sometimes young and generous, or old and timid, but the veterans selected for 
the papal chair are champions of the triple crown, whom philanthropy cannot 
persuade and whom menaces cannot daunt." 

Paris was captured; the Emperor was sent to Elba; peace was con- 



VISCOUNT MELBOURNE, THE MINISTER. 213 

eluded ; but, says Wilson, now a prophet indeed, — " I shall be much 
surprised if the cannon does not rattle through Europe again before 
there is an anniversary of the Peace." He wrote this in June, 
1814, and in June of the following year, Waterloo was fought and 
gained, and Paris again occupied by a foreign army. This catastrophe 
might have been avoided, had Napoleon been content to live as Talley- 
rand had counselled, not as an Emperor of the French, dependent on the 
terrors of Europe and the feeling of his army, but as a wise and liberal 
King of France. He chose, however, a course of appalling lying ; while 
feigning a desire to be at peace with all men, he was preparing to wage 
war even with those with whom he affected to be most strongly moved 
to cultivate friendship. Such a course has its surprises and its 
triumphs ; but it has its costs also, and, as Talleyrand is recorded to 
have said, it may give transitory glory to an individual, but it must end 
in the ruin of a dynasty, —especially of a dynasty of whom it has already 
been noted, that they have shed more French blood for the aggrandize- 
ment* of their own family than all the other sovereigns of France united. 
—Athenaum Review of the Life of Sir Robert Wilson. 



VISCOUNT MELBOURNE, THE MINISTER. 

When Lord Melbourne declared himself quite satisfied with the 
Church as it is, but if the public had any desire to alter it, they might 
do as they pleased, it drew upon him this reproval from Sydney Smith, of 
his habitual carelessness and contempt of duty: — " If the truth must be 
told, our Viscount is something of an impostor. Everything about 
him seems to betoken careless denotation: any one would suppose 
from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human 
happiness ; that he was always on the heels of pastime ; that he 
would giggle away the great Charter, and decide, by the method of tee- 
totum, whether my Lords the Bishops should or should not retain their 
seats in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surprising 
and making us believe that he can play <zvith kingdoms as other men with 
ninepins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, this miracle of moral and intel- 
lectual felicities, he is nothing more than a sensible, honest man, who 
means to do his duty to the Sovereign and to the country ; instead of 
being the ignorant man he pretends to be, before he meets the deputa- 
tion of tallow-chandlers in the morning, he sits up half the night, talking 
with Thomas Young (his private secretary) about melting and skim- 
ming ; and then, though he has acquired knowledge enough to work off 
a whole vat of prime Leicester tallow, he pretends next morning not to 
know the difference between a dip and a mould. In the same way, 
when he has been employed in reading Acts of Parliament, he would 
persuade us that he has been reading Cleghorn on the Beatitudes, or 
Bickler on the Nine Difficult Points. Neither can I allow this Minister 
(however he may be irritated by the denial) the extreme merit of indif- 
ference to the consequence of his measures. I believe him to be con- 
scientiously alive to the good or evil that he is doing, and that his cau- 



2 14 VISCOUNT PALMERS TON. 

tion has more than once arrested the gigantic projects of the Lycurgus 
of the Lower House. I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to 
brush away the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared ; 
but I accuse our minister of honesty and diligence : I deny that he is 
careless or rash ; he is nothing more than a man of good understanding 
and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome 
affectation of a political roue." 

Such affectation is not uncommon. We remember to have called 
upon a barrister in chambers, with the view of refreshing his memory 
with the points of an arbitration case, upon which he was to sum up next 
morning. He appeared listless and indifferent, and we left him with 
the impression that he knew little of the matter ; yet, next morning, he 
most lucidly stated the case without missing a material point, and the 
award was given in his client's favour. He is now one of the most in- 
dependent Judges of the land. 

■ » 

ANCESTRY OF VISCOUNT PALMERSTON. 

It has been the fortune of the Temples to find themselves associated 
with one of the prettiest legends of the Middle Ages, which has formed 
the subject of one of the pre'ctiest poems of our own time. They have 
been given out as coming from the stout old Earl Leofric, of the Con- 
fessor's time, and his Lady Godgifa or Godiva, who saved Coventry 
from a harsh impost by riding through the market-place clad only in 
her beautiful long hair. Leofric (who died a.d. 1057) and his spouse 
are, of course, as really historical personages as the Confessor and Edith. 
And though the Godiva legend does not occur in the Saxon Chronicle, 
in William of Malmesbury, or in Florence of Worcester, it is found in 
Brompton, who flourished in 1 1 93, less than a century and a half after 
the date of its heroine. Nor have we a right to doubt the truth of any 
story simply because there is a noble and daring poetry about it. But 
as regards the descent of the Temples from Leofric and Godiva, that is 
a comparatively modern statement. Dugdale knew nothing of it, though 
he gives a full account of the earl's real successors and family in his 
Baronage, and much information about him, his wife, and their pious 
and generous doings, in his Warwickshire. An earlier writer, and 
more important for this special question than even Dugdale — a writer 
whose Leicestershire is said to have suggested Dugdale's Warwickshire 
—knew no more of the fact than he. We speak of William Burton, 
the elder brother of the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, to whose 
curious mind his own bore a strong family resemblance. Burton was a 
Leicestershire squire himself, and in speaking of the lands of Temple, in 
Sparkenhoe Hundred, near Bosworth, from which the whole family of 
Temple derived its name, this is what he tells us: — "This land was 
granted by one of the old earls of Leicester to the Knights Templars. 
This land was afterwards granted by the Templars to a family of the 
place called Temple, being of great account in these parts. (Burton's 
Leicestershire, p. 264.) Burton, then, knew nothing of the Saxon 
origin of the family ; and it is certain that in the famous Sir William 



CHARACTERISTICS OF COB RETT. 215 

Temple's time they looked upon themselves as having " come in with 
the Conquest." It is often loosely assumed that a family must be either 
Norman or Saxon, though Burgundians and Flemings, Angevins and 
Poitevins, are found among the settlers in England in the stormy and 
adventurous ages during which the foundations of its modern life were 
laid. To which of the various races struggling for place and power the 
founder of the Temples belonged cannot now be known. The earliest 
names in the pedigree, Robert, William, and Henry, are those of Norman 
dukes and sovereigns — an indication which has sometimes been allowed 
to have suggestive value in such cases. At all events, we are safe in 
assuming that the man to whom the Templars gave land would have the 
qualities which the Order of the Temple held in honour, and that he 
acquired his estate, as his descendant acquired his premiership, by being 
superior to other rivals in the battle of life. Dismissing, then, the 
descent from Leofric as fabulous and modern, and trusting to old writers 
and official pedigrees, we shall be content to derive the Temples from 
Robertus Temple de Temple Hall, living in the reign of Henry III.— 
Comhill Magazine. 

» 

CHARACTERISTICS OF COBBETT. 

We do not remember to have seen any better estimate of the charac- 
teristics of this " contentious man " than that given by Sir Henry 
Bulwer, in his Historical Characters, although we hardly consider Cobbett 
to have attained this rank. Speaking of the general regret at Cobbett's 
death, Sir H. Bulwer remarks, " It extended to all persons. Whatever 
a man's talents, whatever a man's opinions, he sought the Register on the 
day of its appearance with eagerness, and read it with amusement, partly, 
perhaps, if De Rochefoucault is right, because whatever his party, he 
was sure to see his friends abused. But partly, also, because he was 
certain to find, amidst a great many fictions and abundance of impudence, 
some felicitous nickname, some excellent piece of practical-looking ar- 
gument, some capital expressions, and very often some marvellously fine 
writing, all the finer for being carelessly fine, and exhibiting the figure or 
sentiment it set forth, in the simplest as well as the most striking dress. 
Cobbett, himself, indeed, said that ' his popularity was owing to his 
giving truth in clear language ; ' and his language always did leave his 
meaning as visible as the most limpid stream leaves its bed. But as to 
its displaying truth, that is a different matter, and it would be utterly- 
impossible unless truth has at least as many heads as the Hydra of 
fable, in which case our author may claim the merit of having portrayed 
them all. 

" This, however, is to be remarked, he rarely abused that which was 
falling or fallen, but generally that which was rising or uppermost. He 
disinterred Paine when his memory was interred, and attacked him as 
an impostor amongst those who hailed him as a prophet. In the heat of 
the contest and cry against the Catholics — whom, when Mr. Pitt was 
for emancipating, he was for grinding into the dust — he calls the Refor- 
mation a devastation, and pronounces the Protestant religion to have 



2i6 CHARACTERISTICS OF COBBETT 

been established by gibbets, racks, and ripping knives. "W hen all London 
was yet rejoicing in Wellington hats and Wellington boots, he expects 
that the celebrated victory of Waterloo had caused to England more 
real shame, more real and substantial disgrace, more debt, more distress 
among the middle class, and more misery amongst the working class, 
more injuries of all kinds, than the kingdom could ever have experienced 
by a hundred defeats, whether by sea or by land." He had a sort of 
itch for bespattering with mud everything that was popular, and gilding 
everything that was odious. Mary Tudor was with him " Merciful 
Queen Mary;" Elizabeth, "Bloody Queen Bess;" our Navy, "the 
swaggering Navy;" Napoleon, "a French coxcomb;'' Brougham, "a 
talking lawyer;" Canning, "a brazen defender of corruptions." 

As for absurdity, nothing was too absurd for him coolly and delibe- 
rately to assert : " The English Government most anxiously wished for 
Napoleon's return to France." " There would have been no National 
Debt and no paupers, if there had been no Reformation." " The popula- 
tion of England had not increased one single soul since he was born." 
Neither did his coarseness know any bounds. He called a newspaper, 
" a cut and thrust weapon," to be used without mercy or delicacy, and 
never thought of anything but how he could strike the hardest. " There's 

a fine congress-man for you ! If any d d rascally rotten borough in 

the universe ever made such a choice as this (a Mr. Blair MacGlenashan) 
you'll be bound to cut my throat, and suffer the sans culottes sovereigns 
of Philadelphia — the hob-snob snigger-snee-ers of Germans, to wit — 
to kick me about in my blood till my corpse is as ugly and disgusting as^ 
their living carcases are." " Bark away, hell-hounds, till you are suffo- 
cated in your own foam/' " This hatter turned painter, whose heart is 
as black and as foul as the liquid in which he dabbles." 

His talent for fastening his claws into any thing or any one, by a word 
or an expression, and holding them down for scorn, or up to horror, was 
unrivalled. " Prosperity Robinson," " JEolus Canning," " The Bloody 
Times ," "The pink- nosed Liverpool" "Theunbaptized,buttonless black- 
guards" (in which way he designated the disciples of Penn), — were ex- 
pressions with which he attached ridicule where he could not fix 
reproach ; and it is said that nothing was more teasing to Lord Erskine 
than being constantly addressed by Cobbett by his second title of " Baron 
Clackmannan." 

The late Lady Holland once asked Sir Henry Bulwer if he did not think 
she sometimes said ill-natured things ; and on his acquiescing, she re- 
joined : "I don't mean to burn any one, but merely to poke the fire." 
Cobbett liked to poke the fire, to make a blaze ; but in general, not 
always — he thought more of sport than of mischief. 

It is curious to observe how frequently Fox alludes to the early writ- 
ings of Cobbett, bearing unconscious testimony to the influence, tempo- 
rary but decisive, exerted by the Register over the opinions even of 
the leading statesmen of the time. 



2i; 



Jxwcjj iis;torg. 




THE CHRONICLES OF FROISSART. 

HE Rev. James White, in his Eighteen Christian Centuries, 
gives the following sparkling picture of the Herodotus of the 
Middle Ages, as Froissart is happily styled : " More impor- 
tant than the poems of Dante and Chaucer, or the prose of 
Boccaccio, was the introduction of the new literature represented by 
Froissart. Hitherto chronicles had for the most part consisted of the 
record of such wandering rumours as reached a monastery, or were 
gathered in the religious pilgrimages of holy men. But at this time 
there came into notice the most inquiring, enterprising, picturesque and 
entertaining chronicler that had ever appeared since Herodotus read the 
result of his personal travels and sagacious inquiries to the assembled 
multitudes of Greece. John Froissart, called by the courtesy of the 
time Sir John, in honour of his being priest and chaplain, devoted a 
long life to the collection of the fullest and most trustworthy accounts 
of all the events and personages characteristic of his time. From 1326, 
when his labours commenced, to 1400, when his active pen stood still, 
nothing happened in any part of Europe that the Paul Pry of the 
period did not rush off to verify on the spot. If he heard of an assem- 
blage of knights going on at the extremities of France, or in the centre 
of Germany ; of a tournament at Bordeaux, a court gala in Scotland, 
or a marriage festival at Milan, his travels began — whether in the humble 
guise of a solitary horseman, with his portmanteau behind his saddle, 
and a single greyhound at his heels, as he jogged wearily across the 
Border, till he finally arrived in Edinburgh ; or in his grander style of 
equipment, gallant steed, with hackney led beside him, and four dogs of 
high race, gambolling round his horse, as he made his dignified journey 
from Ferrara to Rome. Wherever life was to be seen and painted, the 
indefatigable Froissart was to be found. Whatever he had gathered 
up on former expeditions, whatever he learned in his present tour, down 
it went in his own exquisite language, with his own poetical impression 
of the pomps and pageantries he beheld ; and when at the end of his 
journey he reached the court of prince or potentate, no higher treat 
could be offered to the ' noble lords and ladies bright ' than to form a 
glittering circle round the enchanting chronicler, and listen to what he 
had written. From palace to palace, trom castle to castle, the unwearied 
' picker-up of unconsidered trifies ' (which, however, were neither 
trifles nor unconsidered, when their true value became known), pursued 
his happy way, certain of a friendly reception when he arrived, and cer- 
tain of not losing his time by negligence or blindness on the road. If 
he overtakes a stately cavalier, attended by squires and men-at-arms, he 
enters into conversation, drawing out the experiences of the venerable 



1 8 DU HAILLAN. 



warrior by relating to him all he knew of things and persons in which 
he took an interest. And when they put up at some hostelry on the 
road, and while the gallant knight was sound asleep on his straw-stuffed 
couch, and his followers were wallowing amid the rushes on the parlour 
floor, Froissart was busy with pen and note-book, scoring down all the 
old gentleman had told him, all the fights he had been present at, and 
the secret history (if any) of the councils of priests and kings. In this 
way knights in distant parts of the world became known to each other. 
The same voice which described to Douglas at Dalkeith the exploits of 
the Prince of Wales, sounded the praises of Douglas in the ears of the 
Black Prince at Bordeaux." 



VANITY OF THE FRENCH. 

The French, notwithstanding their many admirable qualities, have 
always been more remarkable for personal vanity than the English ; a 
peculiarity partly referrible to those chivalric traditions which, even their 
occasional republics have been unable to destroy, and which makes them 
attach undue importance to external distinctions — that is, not only 
dress and manners, but also medals, ribbons, stars, crosses, and the like, 
which we, a prouder people, have never held in such high estimation. 
The other circumstance is that duelling has, from the beginning, been 
more popular in France than in England ; and as this is a custom which 
we owe to chivalry, the difference in this respect between the two coun- 
tries supplies another link in that long chain of evidence by which we 
must estimate their national tendencies. 

The above is not a mere popular opinion, but rests upon a large 
amount of evidence, supplied by competent and impartial observers. 
Addison, a lenient as well as an able judge, and who had lived much 
among the French, calls them "the vainest nation in the world." 
Napoleon says : " Vanity is the ruling principle of the French." Du- 
mont and Segur declare it to be the dominant trait of the French 
character. It is moreover stated that phrenological observations prove 
that the French are vainer than the English. — Buckle's Hist. Civili- 
zation, vol. i. p. 583. 



AUDACITY OF DU HAILLAN, THE FRENCH 

HISTORIAN. 

Till the end of the sixteenth century, France, though fertile in annalists 
and chroniclers, had not produced a single historian, because she had 
not produced a single man who presumed to doubt what was generally 
believed. In 1576, Du Haillan published his History of the Kings of 
France, in the dedication of which to the King (Henry III.) he says: 
" I am, Sire, the first of all the French who have written the history of 
France, and, in a polite language, shown the dignity and grandeur of our 
kings, for before there was nothing but the old rubbish of the chroniclers 



HO IV FRENCH HISTORY IS WRITTEN. 2T9 

which spoke of them." He adds, in the preface: " Only, I will say, 
without presumption or boasting, that I have done a thing which had 
not been done before, or seen by any of our nation, and have given to 
the history of France a dress it never appeared in before." Du Haillan's 
work was very successful ; he was looked upon as one of the glories of 
the French nation, and was rewarded by the king conferring on him 
the office of Secretary of Finance. But he had taken as the basis of his 
famous history a gossiping compilation, by an Italian named Paulus 
yEmilius, on the " Actions of the French," to whose idle stories he added 
some of his own invention. Thus, he opens his history with a long 
account of a council, which was held, he says, by the celebrated 
Pharamond. But it is doubtful if any such person as Pharamond ever 
existed ; and it is certain that if he did exist at all, all the materials had 
long perished from which an opinion could be formed respecting him. 
But DuHaillan, regardless of these little difficulties, gives us the fullest 
information touching the great chieftain ; and, as if determined to 
tax to the utmost the credulity of his readers, mentions, as members or 
the council of Pharamond, two persons, Charamond and Quadrek, 
whose very names are invented by the historian. 



HOW FRENCH HISTORY IS WRITTEN. 

Comparatively few persons in England have read the once famous 
book on the origin of the French, published in 1676, by Audigier. In 
this great history, we are told, that 3464 years after the creation of the 
world, and 590 years before the birth of Christ, was the exact period at 
which Sigovese, nephew to the King of the Celts, was first sent into 
Germany. Those who accompanied him were necessarily travellers ; 
and as, in the German language, <vuandeln means to go, we have here 
the origin of the Vandals. But the antiquity of the Vandals is far sur- 
passed by that of the French. Jupiter, Pluto, and Neptune, who are 
sometimes supposed to be gods, were in reality Kings of Gaul. And if 
we look a little further back, it becomes certain that Gallus, the founder 
of Gaul, was no other than Noah himself ; for in those days the same 
man had frequently two names. As to the subsequent history of the 
French, it was fully equal to the dignity of their origin. Alexander 
the Great, even in all the pride of his victories, never dared to attack 
the Scythians, who were a colony sent from France. It is from these 
great occupiers of France that there have proceeded all the gods of 
Europe, all the fine arts, and all the sciences. The English themselves 
are merely a colony of the French, as must be evident to whoever con- 
siders the similarity of the words Angles and Anjou ; and to this for- 
tunate descent the natives of the British Islands are indebted for such 
bravery and politeness as they still possess. 

Several other points are cleared up by this great critic with equal 
facility. The Salian Franks were so called from the rapidity of their 
flight ; the Bretons were evidently Saxons ; and even the Scotch, about 
whose independence so much has been said, were vassals to the Kings 
of France — Buckle's Hist. Civilization, vol. i. p. 720. 



220 WAS JOAN OF ARC BURNT AS A WITCH? 



WAS JOAN OF ARC BURNT AS A WITCH? 

On the morning of the 30th of May, 1431, Jeanne the Maiden, or 
Joan of Arc, was burned as a witch and heretic in the old market at 
Rouen, where a memorial to her has since been erected. Such is the 
narrative of one of the most remarkable revolutions in history. A country 
girl overthrew the power of England. However easy it may be to sup- 
pose that a heated and enthusiastic imagination produced her own visions, 
it is a much easier problem to account for the credit they obtained, and 
for the success that attended her. It is certain that the appearance of 
Joan of Arc turned the tide of war ; a superstitious awe enfeebled the 
sinews of the English, who conceived her to be a female magician. " As 
man always make sure of Providence for an ally, whatever untoward 
fortune appeared to result from preternatural causes, was at once ascribed 
to infernal enemies ; and such bigotry may be pleaded as an excuse, 
though a very miserable one, for the detestable murder of this heroine." 
(Hal/am.) Historians, one copying the words of another, assert that 
Joan was burned at Rouen in 1431 ; while documentary evidence of the 
most authentic character, completely negativing the story of her being 
burned, shows she was alive and happily married several years after the 
period alleged to be that of her execution. Many of these documents are 
in the registry of the city of Mentz, and prove that Joan came thither in 
1436, when the magistrates, to make sure that she was not an impostor, 
sent for her brothers, Pierre and Jean, who at once recognised her. The 
documents at Mentz are detailed by M. Delepierre, in his Historical 
Difficulties and Contested Events, published in April, 1868, pp. 105-115. 
Several entries in the city records enumerate the presents, with the 
names of the donors, that were given to Joan on her marriage with the 
Chevalier d' Armoise ; and even their marriage contract has been dis- 
covered. In the archives of the city of Orleans, in the treasurer's ac- 
counts for 1435, is an entry of payments to messengers, who had brought 
letters from Jeanne la Pucelle. Under date 1436, is an entry of twelve 
livres paid to Jean de Lys, brother of Jeanne la Pucelle, that he might 
go and see her. The King of France ennobled Joan's family, giving 
them the appellation of de Lys, derived from the Jleur de lys, on account 
of her services to the State ; and the entry in the Orleans records cor- 
responds with and corroborates the one in the registry of Mentz, which 
states that the magistrates of the latter city sent for her brothers to 
identify her. These totally independent sources of evidence confirm 
each other in a still more remarkable manner. Thus, in the Orleans 
treasurer's accounts are the expenses for wine, banquets, and public re- 
joicings, in 1439, when Robert d' Armoise and Jeanne, his wife, visited 
that city ; also a memorandum of 210 livres paid to Jeanne d' Armoise, 
for the services rendered by her during the siege of the said city of 
Orleans. 

It has been urged, however, that Dame d' Armoise was an impostor; 
but if she were, why did the brothers of the real Joan recognise and 
identify her ? Admitting that they did, for the purpose of profiting by 



WAS JOAN OF ARC BURNT AS^A WITCH? 2 2i 

the fraud, how could the citizens of Orleans, who knew her so well, and 
who fought side-by-side with her, during the memorable siege, allow 
themselves to be so grossly deceived ? Immediately after the burning there 
was a common rumour that Joan was not dead, and that another victim 
had been substituted for her. In the His tore de Lorraine, by Dom 
Calmet, we read that the Maid of Orleans escaped in the crowd, and no 
one knew what became of her. Some supposed her to have been cap- 
tured and carried to Rouen, and burnt; others affirm that the army was 
aware of her death. The chronicle of Mentz relates her death at the 
stake, with this addition : " it was so asserted, but since that time a con- 
trary opinion has been held." M. Delepierre quotes from Pasquier, 
that " the inexplicable delay, between the condemnation and execution, 
and still more the extraordinary precautions that were taken to hide the 
victim from the eyes of the public, are very remarkable. When she 
was led to the stake a large mitre was placed on her head, which con- 
cealed the greater part of her face, and a huge frame covered with in- 
sulting phrases, was carried before her, and completely concealed her 
person." 

In fine, the French antiquaries best qualified to form a correct opinion 
on the subject, believe that Joan was not burned but kept in prison until 
after the death of the Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, in 1435, 
when Joan was liberated; this being trie year before she married Robert 
d'Armoise. 

Disraeli tells us he has read somewhere that a bundle of fagots was 
substituted for Joan, at the burning at Rouen, though none of our his- 
torians notice this anecdote. " Whether she deserved to have been dis- 
tinguished by the appellation of the Maid of Orleans, we have great 
reason to suspect ; and some in her day, from her fondness for man's 
apparel, even doubted her sex" 

It would almost justify the popular belief in the celestial mission of 
Joan of Arc, that her fame survived the ribaldry of Vataire in the me- 
mory of the French people. The most enthusiastic admirers of the 
" Patriarch of Ferney," however lax in precept or practice, cannot but 
reprobate the gross buffoonery of his Pucelle d Orleans, which the 
Shakspeare forger, W. H. Ireland, translated in 1823. Yet the memory 
of the poor peasant girl of Domremy is still cherished — of the enthusiast, 
who at twelve years old had already begun to invest with visible forms 
the creations of her own fancy ; who turned her enthusiasm to the de- 
liverance of her country from its oppressors, and who believed that she 
was " the Maid " who, according to the traditionary prophecy, was to 
issue from the forest of oaks adjoining her native village, and become 
the saviour of France. 

The city of Orleans still celebrates the anniversary of its deliverance 
by Joan of Arc. Of the 435th celebration we read : "On the eve of 
the festival the municipal body of Orleans (whose predecessors, in 1429, 
had done good service that Sunday morning when Suffolk, disconcerted 
by repeated losses, resolved to raise the siege) marched to the stately 
cathedral to deposit the banner of the Maid, which is preserved in the 
Town-house. The whole body of the clergy attended the ceremony, 



222 CHARLES VI. OF FRANCE. 

while hymns were chanted by hundreds of voices. The banner was 
blessed and received by the bishop, and the church, covered with flags 
and displaying the arms of the towns which assisted Orleans during its 
struggle against the English and the Burgundians, was magnificently 
illuminated. On the following day the Prefect of the department, the 
magistracy, the clergy of the city and of the adjoining towns and villages, 
the troops of the garrison, the municipal councils of the neighbouring 
communes, the medallists of St. Helena, the corporations of the working 
classes, assembled in the cathedral to hear the panegyric on Joan of Arc 
delivered by the Abbe Bougaud. The procession, in going to and re- 
turning from the church, traversed the streets of the city, which tradition 
says Joan rode through in full armour, bearing her sacred banner, the 
day she convoyed a supply of provisions from Blois to the famished de- 
fenders of Orleans, and visited the ruins of the fort of the Tourelles, 
where she was wounded by an English arrow. 

" On the eve of the fete, M. E. Morin delivered at the Literary Hall, 
and before a numerous audience, a panegyric on the deliverer of Orleans. 
He described with most interesting detail the visit of Joan to the Court 
of Chinon, the taking of Orleans, and the expeditions to Paris and 
Compiegne. He alluded, too, to the retribution which fell upon the 
judges and persecutors of the Maid, and in conclusion invited France 
and England to ' a fraternal rivalry of peace,' and expressed a hope 
that both countries would before long join in raising a monument of ex- 
piation to the memory of the Maid of Orleans." 



TRAGIC TALES OF CHARLES VI. OF FRANCE. 

M. A. Jal, in his Dictionnaire Critique, devotes a curious article to 
Charles VI. of France, about whom the most absurd stories have been 
told, not only by modem historians, but by the annalists who flourished 
during the fifteenth century. " C'estoit grande pitie," says Juvenal des 
Ursins, " de la maladie du Roy, laquelle luy tenoit longuement. Et 
quand il mangeoit, c'estoit bien gloutement et louvissement {after the 
fashion of wolves') ; et ne le pouvoit on faire despouiller, et estoit tout 
plein de pouz, vermine et ordure" .... &c. Of course, on the au- 
thority of so grave an historian as Juvenal des Ursins, the tragic tale soon 
spread. It is so exciting ! so effective ! Charles VI. victim of Isabel of 
Bavaria and of the Duke d'Orleans, her paramour! See the country a 
prey to English invasion, misery everywhere, and whilst a few unprin- 
cipled courtiers are forgetting the ruin of France in the midst of noisy- 
pleasures, behold the wretched King, forgotten in his apartments, starv- 
ing, eaten up by vermin, and totally bereft of his senses ! The theme is a 
splendid one for a tragedy or a picture, and some persons still remember 
Talma when he appeared on the stage, saying in a hollow voice — "Du pain 1 
du pain ! je n'en ai pas ! " Now, what are the facts of history ? Between the 
different fits which impaired so lamentably the monarch's health and 
strength, Juvenal des Ursins himself numbers eleven lucid intervals. Now, 
during these intervals, which were of unequal length, Charles VI. re- 



LOUIS XI. 223 



ceived the members of his council and the principal State officers. Is it 
to be supposed that he held these audiences otherwise than dressed and 
attired as became a sovereign ? Surely it was the interest of every one 
that he should be clean, to say the least. And as no one knew when 
these moments of lucidity would occur, when the light of reason would 
assume its position in the King's brain, was there no danger on the part 
of Charles' officers to run the chance of his suddenly waking up, finding 
himself destitute of even ordinary care, and therefore chastising heavily 
those who thus neglected him ? In point of fact, M. Jal has been able to 
discover and to study in the Imperial Record Office of France docu- 
ments proving beyond a doubt that from 1392, when the King first felt 
the attack of his malady, to the last days of his life, he was abundantly 
provided with everything he needed. We are thus led to the conclusion 
that the whole story of the destitution, dirt, and loneliness from which 
he is reported to have suffered was a gross fabrication, invented by the 
personal enemies of Isabel of Bavaria. This wicked Queen's conduct 
was in many respects as bad as it could be, but that is not a reason why 
she should be calumniated. 



LOUIS XI. 

Comines, the contemporary and confidant of Louis XL, gives the best 
account of this ill-fated Sovereign. He exhibited early a duplicity of 
disposition, for which his father mistrusted him. He revolted against 
his father in 1456, and being defeated had taken refuge at the court of 
Philip, Duke of Burgundy, who protected him, and maintained him for 
six years, until his father's death. Louis, when king, became the bitterest 
enemy of Charles, the son of Philip. When Charles made Louis XI. 
prisoner, in 1468, Comines conciliated the two princes, and brought 
about a treaty of peace between them: this timely service was not 
forgotten by Louis, into whose service passed Comines as chamberlain 
and seneschal of Poitou, the reasons for which step by Comines have 
remained a secret. 

Louis aimed at being an absolute Sovereign, and set himself to crush 
the feudal nobility, and raise the cities, so as to balance their power. 
His measures were often dreadfully cruel. At Loches he had a dun- 
geon, where offenders were imprisoned, and often cruelly tormented, by 
being put into iron cages, where they had not room to stand upright, or 
to lie at full length. The most horrible of all Louis's cruelties was 
exercised on Henri and Francois, the two young sons of the Duke de 
Nemours, who, after their father had been executed, were shut up in 
these cramping cages, and condemned to lose a tooth every day, which 
Louis desired should be brought to him. Henri, who was only ten 
years old, entreated the jailor to draw two of his teeth, and spare his 
little brother, which was done until death put an end to Henri's suffer- 
ings. Little Francois was then released from his cage and confined in 
a room ; he lived to be released and restored to his dukedom, but his 
limbs had become strangely deformed by his confinement. 



224 REAL CHARACTER OF LOUIS XIV. 

King Louis, in the meantime, lived in terror and dread, in his strongly- 
fortified castle of Plessis le Tours, apart from his brave barons, with no 
better companions than Olivier, the barber, and Tristan, the hangman. 
Other kings showed themselves in their towns, held banquets openly, 
and rode forth among their knights ; but Louis XI. shut himself up in 
the gloomy double-walled Plessis, watched day and night by the Scot- 
tish archers. From this den Louis greatly extended his power ; for 
Comines, who gives a faithful picture of the King, greatly extols him for 
his political art. Yet he had a great dread of death, which, in his declining 
health, he strove to conceal from others. Thus he made schemes for 
wars, and imported animals for the chase, that he might be supposed in 
full health. He superstitiously surrounded himself with relics from 
churches, and the sacred oil of Rheims, as charms against death ; and 
hermits were sought out from their cells, as if they could prolong his 
life. Amidst these delusions he died, August 30, 1485, leaving behind 
him one of the most detested names in history. He was the first who 
assumed the title of " Most Christian King," which was given him by 
the Pope in 1469. 



REAL CHARACTER OF LOUIS XIV. 

We find the following masterly " reckoning up " (to use a vulgar, 
but not inexpressive, term) of this Ninepin of French History, in The 
Edinburgh Review, 1 832: — 

" Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems, at last, 
to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he 
was not a great statesman ; but he was, in one sense of the word, a great 
king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the 
First would have called king-craft — of all those arts which most advan- 
tageously display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his 
defects. Though his internal administration was bad ; though the mili- 
tary triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his reign were 
not achieved by himself ; though his later years were crowded by defeats 
and humiliations ; though he was so ignorant that he scarcely under- 
stood the Latin of his mass-book ; though he fell under the control of 
a cunning Jesuit, and of a more cunning old woman ; he succeeded in 
passing himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this 
is the more extraordinary because he did not seclude himself from the 
public gaze like those Oriental despots, whose faces are never seen, and 
whose very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. 

" It has been said that no man is a hero to his valet ; and all the world 
saw as much of Louis XI V. as his valet could see. Five hundred people 
assemble^ to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He 
then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said his prayer, while the 
whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silence — the ecclesiastics on 
their knees, and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked 
about his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All 



REAL CHARACTER OF LOUIS XIV. 225 

Versailles- came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night 
in the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise 
in the morning. He took his very emetics in State, and vomited ma- 
jestically in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet, 
though he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze, in situations 
in which it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal 
dignity, he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the 
deepest awe and reverence. The illusions which he produced on his 
worshippers can be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are 
proverbially subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion 
which affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought 
him tall. Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with 
some of the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly 
of his majestic stature. Yet, it is as certain as any fact can be, that he 
was rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way 
of holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and 
rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty 
years after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the Revolu- 
tionists ; his coffin was opened, his body was dragged out ; and it ap- 
peared that the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and 
so loudly extolled, was in truth a little man. 

His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the 
art of making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest 
evidence that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time 
have exposed both the deceptions. The body of the great king has 
been measured more justly than it was measured by the courtiers, who 
were afraid to look above his shoe-tie. His public character has been 
scrutinized by men free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere. 
In the grave the most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In his- 
tory, the hero and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant — 
the slave of priests and women ; little in war, little in government, little 
in everything but the art of simulating greatness. 

He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a 
beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovern- 
ment and persecution ; factions dividing the court ; a schism rising in 
the church ; an immense debt ; an empty treasury ; immeasurable pa- 
laces; an innumerable household; inestimable jewels and furniture. 
All the sap and nutriment of the State seemed to have been drawn to 
feed one bloated and unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. 
The court was morbidly flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the 
associations which attached the people to the monarchy had lost 



* It was long a common opinion that Louis XIV. burnt all the bills relating 
to the building of the palace of Versailles — like a citizen after an expensive 
excursion. It has, however, been ascertained that the money expended on 
Versailles from 1664 to 1690, was 81,151,414 francs, or about 6,300,000/. at the 
present day. Amongst the items we find that the machine of Marly cost, with- 
out the pipes or aqueducts, nearly 280,000/. For plate, pictures, medals, &c, 
not comprised in the above, upwards of 500,000/. 

Q 



226 THE ANCIEN REGIME. 

strength during his reign. He had neglected or sacrificed their dearest 
interests ; but he had struck their imaginations. The very things which 
ought to have made him most unpopular— the prodigies of luxury and 
magnificence with which his person was surrounded ; while beyond the 
enclosures of his parks, nothing was to be seen but starvation and despair 
— seemed to increase the respectful attachment which his subjects felt 
for him." 

Here are two other estimates of the Grand Monarque. A writer in 
the Saturday Review, says : — 

" After divesting the character of Louis XIV. of the exaggerated praise 
bestowed on him by flattery or national vanity, after animadverting upon 
his numerous faults, and even crimes, it must be fairly acknowledged 
that he was a remarkable prince, and had many valuable qualities. He 
was active, intelligent, and regular in business ; quick in discovering the 
abilities of others, an able administrator himself, endowed with a con- 
stant equanimity in adversity as well as prosperity, and a perfect self- 
command; a kind master, he was not prone to change his servants 
capriciously, was not harsh in rebuking them, and was ever ready to 
encourage merit, and praise and reward zeal for his service. Hence he 
had many faithful and devoted servants. His manner was noble, and 
his appearance imposing ; he acted the king, but he acted it admirably, 
at least to the then taste of the people ; he had a lively sense of decorum 
and outward propriety, which never forsook him. What he knew he 
learnt by himself: his natural gifts and the experience of his youth, 
passed among civil wars, made up for his want of learning and of study. 
If he carried his notions of absolutism to an extreme, he was evidently 
persuaded of his supposed right, and acted as much from a sense of 
duty as from inclination. In his reign of seventy-two years he reared 
the fabric of the absolute monarchy in France, which continued for 
seventy-two years more after his death ; and when it was shaken to 
pieces in the storm of the Revolution, still the ruling principles of his 
administration, uniformity and centralization, survived the wreck, and 
France is still governed by them. " 

Mr. Buckle, on the other hand, contends, with some ingenuity, that 
"the reputation of Louis XIV. originated in the gratitude of men of 
letters ; but it is now supported by a popular notion that the celebrated 
literature of his age is mainly to be ascribed to his fostering care. If, 
however, we examine this opinion, we shall find that like many of the 
traditions of which history is full, it is entirely devoid of truth ; and 
that the literary splendour of his reign was not the result of his efforts. 
but was the work of that great generation which preceded him, and 
that the intellect of France, so far from being benefited by his munifi- 
cence, was hampered by his protection." 



THE ANCIEN REGIME. 

The Rev. Charles Kingsley defines the Ancien Regime as it existed 
on the Continent before the French Revolution, to signify a " caste " of 



CHARACTER OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU. 227 

society distinguished from " class " and different from aristocracy. The 
members of this caste, presuming on a supposed superiority over the 
other portions of the community, whom they affected to control, re- 
fused to intermarry with any one not belonging to their own privileged 
set. The anclen regime took its rise after the Thirty Years' War, and 
flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; and Mr. . 
Kingsley attributes its origin to the reactionary conservative feeling which 
followed that devastating war, when the people, disgusted with constant 
turmoil, sought anxiously for rest, and were inclined to reverence the 
forms and practices of a bygone age when those forms and ceremonies 
were associated with honourable acts and useful works. It was an 
attempt to restore chivalry without the spirit that gave it vitality, or the 
benefits it conferred. It is like mounting the empty suits of armour in 
the Tower on wooden horses and endeavouring to make them pass 
with the multitude for living knights on their chargers, ready to redress 
the wrongs of mankind. He attributes the immediate origin of the 
ancien regime to Louis XIV., who invited the principal nobles of France 
to Paris, where they passed their time in frivolity and idleness. He con- 
demns in no measured terms the institution of this caste, founded on 
pride and idleness ; those who were included in it having neglected all 
the duties belonging to them as nobles and landed proprietors, endea- 
vouring to grind down and keep under the people whom they were 
bound to help and succour. In England there never was an ancien 
regime. The natural freedom of the people resisted it, and the love of 
liberty inherent in them was transplanted to America, whence it was re- 
flected back to France, and bore its fruits in the French Revolution, by 
which the ancien regime of that country was destroyed. 

The wickedness and pride of the French noblesse are well known ; 
but the following reason why they were so hated has not been suffi- 
ciently noticed. Mr. Kingsley says : — " Why so cruel ? Because, with 
many of these men, I more than suspect there were wrongs to be 
avenged deeper than any wrongs done to the sixth sense of vanity, 
wrongs common to them, and to a great portion of the respectable 
middle class, and much of the lower class ; but wrongs to which they 
and their families, being most in contact with the noblesse, would be 
especially exposed — namely, wrongs to women. Every one who knows 
the literature of that time must know what I mean." 

Mr. Kingsley does not fail to enforce that the duty of governing bodies 
ot men is to endeavour to raise those below them to their own level, for 
if they did not he said they might be sure that in the course of time 
they would be dragged down to the lower level of the populace 



CHARACTER OF CARDINAL RICHELIEU. 

M. Van Praet, one of the new Belgian school of historians, presents 
us with this masterly portrait of Richelieu, in one of his essays, edited 
by Sir Edmund Head. " The life of Richelieu ; the reserve which he 
maintained before he acquired the height of power ; his guarded beha- 
lf 



228 KEEPING PIGEONS IN FRANCE. 

viour towards those who had it in their power to injure him without 
his being able to retaliate; his rigour towards such of his personal 
enemies as he was able to reach ; his care not to create new adversa- 
ries ; his large views and his minute precautions ; his natural severity ; 
his insensibility, which was more evident when he was menaced, ill, 
or unfortunate ; his anxiety the day after he had shed the blood of ~ an 
adversary ; the care he took of his dignity at such times when his con- 
duct might compromise him ; the precision which he brought to bear 
on the execution of an idea which was bold or somewhat immoral, — 
everything in his career proves the firmness, exactness, and courage of 
his mind, and the lukewarm character of his feelings. His jealousies 
were never vulgar or blind ; he was not afraid of employing and favour- 
ing men of position, reserving to himself the right of crushing them if 
they were rebellious or unfaithful. He removed or sacrificed those 
who might have ruined his credit or menaced his life ; not those who 
could serve him with distinction and even with glory. What is so 
remarkable in him is the power and resolution of a great intellect, 
plunging at once calmly and fearlessly into the vast and complicated 
future of a bold policy ; while he saw, with a glance as comprehensive 
as it was just, the distance of the goal and the obstacles on the road. 
As soon as he had become powerful, he revealed his designs ; he nego- 
tiated with the United Provinces, and manifested his true sentiments 
with regard to Spain. What distinguished his genius was that his 
audacity was tempered by rule, and by reflection ; the energy of this 
enterprising spirit, and the activity of this suffering body, were governed 
by cool calculation and by reason. The union of qualities which he 
possessed — his mind at once indomitable and prudent, bold and watchful 
— justly places him very high in the admiration of the world, as one 
among the men who have exercised most influence on the destinies of a 
great country." 






KEEPING PIGEONS IN FRANCE. 

Before the Revolution, to avoid the least chance of confusion between 
the aristocracy and the people, great vigilance was displayed in the most 
trifling matters, and care was taken to prevent any similarity, even in 
the amusements of the two classes. To such a pitch was this brought 
that in many parts of France the right of having an aviary or a dove- 
cote, depended entirely on a man's rank, and no Frenchman, whatever 
his wealth might be, could keep pigeons unless he were a noble; it 
being considered that these recreations were too elevated for persons of 
plebeian origin. 

M. Tocqueville, (JJ Anclen Regime, p. 448), mentions, among other 
regulations still in force in the eighteenth century, that in Dauphiny, 
Brittany, and Normandy, plebeians were not allowed to have dovecotes 
or aviaries, and that only the nobles had the privilege of keeping 
pigeons. 



STORY OF THE " VENGEUR DU PEUPLE: 



,29 



THE STORY OF THE "VENGEUR DU PEUPLE." 

Amid all the sanguinary horrors of the great French Revolution 
stands forth that famous engagement between English men-of-war and 
the ships of the Republic, fought on " the glorious first of June," 
1794 ; when, in the universal crash of defeat and scudding wrecks, the 
Fengeur, being summoned to strike, still held on the fight ; and though 
maimed hopelessly right and left, stem and stern, and sinking to the 
bottom steadily, fought the battle to the last. The lower-deck guns 
were kept firing, until the water rushing in, effectually stopped the 
labours of the gallant sai ors. Driven to the upper deck, they worked 
the guns there with equal fierceness, until similarly interrupted. Finally, 
with colours flying, with deck crowded with frantic sans-culoties 
sailors, tossing their arms in defiance, shrieking one vociferous chorus 
of " Vive la Republique," down sinks the Fengeur, and is never seen 
more. Here was a subject for painter, for poet, or story-teller ! 

But this, it would appear, is the cruel practical version of the whole 
affair. Lord Howe had come up with Villaret Joyeuse, off Brest, and 
a tremendous sea-fight had taken place, with the usual issue six 
French ships taken, and a seventh, the Fengeur, gone to the bottom. 
This was the news brought to London, and proclaimed at the opera- 
house to the music of God save the King. To the French capital, 
then, in utter chaos, news of a victory must be announced, for anything 
like a defeat would be guillotining matter for those who announced it. 
Gradually, however, the truth comes out ; that ruinous business of six 
vessels absent and a Fengeur sunk, sounds queerly as a victory. Some- 
thing must be done, and that speedily, and the ingenious forthwith 
manufacture the splendid transparency of the sinking Fengeur, and the 
" all hands" shouting " Vive la Republique" as they go down. 

Curious to say, perfidious Albion at once accepted the transparency, 
and admired it more than any others ; until, unluckily, the story being 
resuscitated in 1862 — sixty-eight years after the fight — an English 
naval man, actually in the fight, and not a cable's length from the sink- 
ing vessel, comes forward, and slits the mendacious wind-bag open. It 
was, he says, at the end of the fight, the poor Fengeur was in a helpless 
condition, and settling down fast. There were no colours flying, and 
there were plenty of sans -culottes, frantic indeed, and shouting, not 
defiance, but in despair. The boats of perfidious Albion were hard at 
work, almost swamped, bringing them off. A hundred of these 
" defiant Fengeur s" were dragged on board the Culloden • more in that 
ship, more in this ; and above all, the Captain, Renaudin, at lunch in 
the conqueror's cabin ! " Never, in fact," says that officer, " were 
men more anxious to be saved." Here, indeed, is a collapse ! — 
(Abridged from All the Tear Round, with additions.) 

M. Jal, in his Dictionnaire Critique, places the whole facts of the 
Fengeur episode in their true light, and shows that the sans-culotte 
enthusiasm has mis-stated, in the grossest manner, the various circum- 
stances of the naval engagement. He who would represent the last 



230 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

moments of the Vengeur du Penple with a due regard to historic truth, 
must paint the poor ship sinking without a mast, without a flag, and 
without officers, for they had all been taken prisoners. On the deck is 
a group of men, some in despair, others calm and gloomy, a few accom- 
plishing that sacrifice amidst the cries of Vive la Republique. Further 
on, the boats of the Culloden and of the Alfred should be introduced, 
full of sailors who have been rescued from death, and who are awaiting 
their unfortunate comrades. In everything that has been painted and 
written in France on the subject, there is much to be altered. Renaudin, 
captain of the French ship, saved with several of his crew, was sent to 
Tavistock and remained a prisoner only for a very short time. M. Jal 
gives us the letter which Captain Oakes, of the Royal Navy, wrote to 
the French officer for the purpose of informing him that he was set 
free. It is, and our author acknowledges it himsell, a model of courtesy 
and kindness. Renaudin, we are sorry to say, behaved in a totally 
different manner ; we presume that he considered it the duty of a true 
republican to be wanting in common civility; he thoroughly succeeded; 
and his answer to Captain Oakes, likewise transcribed by M. Jal, is 
very curious, examined from that point of view. 

■» 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

The following account of the victims of the first French Revolution 
is from the statement of the Republican Prudhomme : 

Nobles 1,278 

Noble women 750 

Wives of labourers and of artisans ....... 1,467 

Religieuses 350 

Priests I'i'iS 

Common persons (not noble) 13,623 

Guillotined by sentence of the Revolutionary Tribunal 18,603 

Women died of premature childbirth 3,400 

In childbirth from grief 348 

Women killed in La Vendee 15,000 

Children killed in La Vendee 22,000 

Men killed in La Vendee 900,000 

Victims under Carrier at Nantes 32,000 

Of whom were — Children shot . . 500 

Children drowned . 1500 

Women shot . . 264 

Women drowned . 500 

Priests shot . . . 300 

Priests drowned . 460 

Nobles drowned . 1400 

Artisans drowned . 3500 
Victims at Lyons 31,000 

Total . . 1,022,351 

It is in an especial manner remarkable in this dismal catalogue, how 



EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. 231 



large a proportion of the victims of the Revolution were persons in the 
middling and lower ranks of life. The priests and nobles guillotined 
are only 2413, while the persons of plebeian origin exceed 13,000 ! The 
nobles and priests put to death at Nantes were only 2160, while the in- 
fants drowned and shot were 2000, the women 7641, and the artisans 
5300 ! So rapidly in revolutionary convulsions does the career of 
cruelty reach the lower orders, and so wide-spread is the carnage dealt 
out to them, compared with that which they have sought to inflict on 
their superiors. — Sir Archibald Alison's History of Europe. 



EXECUTION OF CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 

In this terrific episode of the French Revolution, one of the execu- 
tioner's assistants having, as he held up the head of Charlotte Corday, 
smote it with his hand on the cheek, and of that cheek having blushed 
with indignation, a theory has been advanced that sensibility does not 
immediately die with the body, when violent death kills the latter by 
decapitation. The German anatomist, Sommering, appeals to the above 
incident as a "well-known fact," witnessed by many people, in proof of 
the theory of sensation after death by beheading. Dr. Sue indorses the 
theory, the more readily, as he says, the cheek of an ordinary corpse 
will not redden by being struck ; and that, when the head of Charlotte 
Corday was held up, it was only smitten on one cheek, and that both 
cheeks blushed with shame, a perfect proof, says Dr. Sue, that " after 
decollation there is undoubtedly in the brain some remains of judgment, 
and in the nerves remains of sensibility." An equally illustrious man, 
Cabanis, declared that he did not believe a word of the theory of his 
celebrated colleagues. Cabanis, in a learned dissertation on the subject, 
further stated, that a medical man of ability, a friend of his, followed 
Charlotte Corday from the prison to the scaffold ; that he never lost 
sight of her for a moment ; that she turned slightly pale on ascending, 
but that her face soon shone more beautiful than ever ; and that as for 
the reputed blush mantling her dead cheek when the hangman struck 
them, he saw nothing whatever of the sort. Dr. Leveille also discredits 
the story ; but he is not prepared, he says, to assert that the recently 
dead cheek, still warm, might not have reddened when struck. A blow, 
he thinks, might arrest the downward flow of remains of blood in the 
small vessels, and thus produce a momentary redness ; but as for judg- 
ment or sensibility being there, or both cheeks blushing when only one 
is struck, he wisely rejects all such conclusions as sheer nonsense. Be- 
tween these statements it is easy to choose. 



EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. 

Every schoolgirl knows the story of pure, good, soft-hearted, stupid 
Louis, who could not read the signs of the times, and whom we actually 
lose temper with for his obtuseness. But we are agreed how nobly he 



232 EXECUTION OF THE DUC D'ENGHIEN. 

played his part at the end, and how a courageous Irish clergyman, of 
the Edgeworth family, was found to stand by him on the scaffold. 
Happily, there is no false colouring so far. We know all the incidents 
of that terrible scene, the rolling of the drums when he would speak his 
indignant protest against his hands being tied like a common malefactor's, 
and his ready consent to a whisper from the priest. So far, all true. 
But, alas ! that we must sponge out that grand apostrophe which is, 
indeed, the culmination of the whole. " Fils de Saint Louis, montez 
au ciel !" It is like tearing up a tree by the roots. It grieves one to 
the soul to have to give up that darling bit of sentiment. The whole 
scene, otherwise pathetic, somehow seems to halt, and become tame, 
after that excision. Yet, it could not stay, except out of mere compli- 
ment to the poor King, for the words were never spoken. Who, in- 
deed, was to pick them up ? Not the poor King, certainly. Not the crowd, 
for the drums were beating furiously. Sanson (the executioner) and 
his brethren were not likely to treasure up a bit of sentiment. Clearly 
then, it rests with the Abbe Edgeworth himself, who, when pressed on 
the subject, had no recollection of having made such an apostrophe. 
The moment was one of agitation. He does not know or recollect any 
words of the kind, and might have spoken twenty other such speeches. 

This is unsatisfactory When the Restoration came, almost every 

one had in their mouth the happy mot of the King, so full or tact and 
wit. "There is nothing changed in France, only one Frenchman more." 
But every one did not know that the French ex-bishops had been asking 
perseveringly, " Had he said anything ?" and finally, in despair at any- 
thing neat or appropriate from such a quarter, had sent forth their plea- 
sant guess, Thus is history written. — All the Tear Round, 



EXECUTION OF THE DUC D'ENGHIEN. 

Many details attending this transaction are still in dispute ; but the 
broad outline of it is as follows : — The pure Republicans (as they were 
then called) had, on the one hand, at this period, become desperate ; on 
the other hand, the latitude that had for a time been allowed to the 
Royalists, had given that party courage. The renewal of an European 
war increased this courage. The power and prestige of the marvellous 
person at the head of the consular government had made both parties 
consider that nothing was possible to them so long as he lived. 

A variety of attempts had consequently been made against his life. 
The popular belief, that of Bonaparte himself, was that these attempts 
proceeded mainly, from the emigres, aided by the money of England. 
Georges Cadoudal, the daring leader of the Chouans, who had already 
been implicated in plots of this kind, was known to be in Paris and en- 
gaged in some new enterprise, with which Pichegru certainly, Moreau 
apparently, was connected. But in the reports of the police it was also 
stated that the conspirators awaited the arrival at Paris of a prince of 
the house of Bourbon. 

The Due d'Enghien, then residing at Ettenheinij in the Duchy of 



EXECUTION OF THE DUC UENGHIEN. 233 

Baden, seemed the most likely of the Bourbon princes to be the one al- 
luded to ; and spies were sent to watch his movements. The reports of 
such agents are rarely correct in the really important particulars. But 
they were particularly unfortunate in this instance ; for they mistook, 
owing to the German pronunciation, a Marquis de Thumery, staying 
with the Bourbon Prince, for Dumouriez, and the presence of that 
general on the Rhenan frontier, and with a Conde, strongly corroborated 
all other suspicions. 

A council was summoned, composed of the three consuls — Bonaparte, 
Cambaceres, Lebrun — the minister of justice and police, Regnier — and 
Talleyrand, minister of foreign affairs. 

At this council (March 10th, 1804) it was discussed whether it 
would not be advisable to seize the Due d'Enghien, though out of 
France, and bring him to Paris ; and the result was the immediate ex- 
pedition of a small force, under Colonel Caulaincourt, which seized 
the Prince on the Baden Territory (March 15th); M. de Talleyrand, 
in a letter to the Grand Duke, explaining and justifying the outrage. 
Having been kept two days at Strasburg, the royal victim was sent 
from that city on the 18th, in a post-chariot, arrived on the 20th at the 
gates of Paris, at eleven in the morning ; was kept there till four in the 
afternoon ; was then conducted by the boulevards to Vincennes, which 
he reached at nine o'clock in the evening ; and was shot at six o'clock 
on the following morning, having been condemned by a military com- 
mission composed of a general of brigade (General Hallin), six colonels, 
and two captains, according to a decree of the Governor of Paris 
(Murat) of that day (March 20th) ; which decree (dictated by Napoleon) 
ordered the unfortunate captive to be tried on the charge of having borne 
arms against the Republic, of having been and being in the pay of 
England, and of having been engaged in plots, conducted by the English 
in and out of France, against the French government. The concluding 
order was that, if found guilty, he should be at once executed. 

The whole of this proceeding is atrocious. A prince of the dethroned 
family is arrested in a neutral State, without a shadow of legality ; he 
is brought to Paris, and tried for his life on accusations which, consider- 
ing his birth and position, no generous enemy could have considered 
crimes ; he is found guilty without a witness being called, without a 
proof of the charges against him being adduced, and without a person 
to defend him being allowed. 

The trial takes place at midnight, in a dungeon ; and the prisoner is 
shot, before the break of day, in a ditch ! 

It is natural enough that all persons connected with such a transaction 
should have endeavoured to escape from its ignominy. General Hallin 
has charged Savary (afterwards Due de Rovigo) who, as commander 
of the Gendarmerie, was present at the execution, with having hurried 
the trial, and prevented an appeal to Napoleon, which the condemned 
prince demanded. The Due de Rovigo denies with much plausibility 
these particulars, and indeed, all concern in the affair beyond his mere 
presence, and the strict fulfilment of the orders he had received ; and 
accuses M. de Talleyrand, against whom, it must be observed, he had a 



234 EXECUTION OF THE DUC DENGHIEN. 

special grudge, with having led to the prince's seizure by a report 
read at the council on the ioth March ; with having intercepted a letter 
written to the first consul by the illustrious captive at Strasburg, and 
with having hastened and provoked the execution, of which he offers no 
other proof than that he met Talleyrand, at five o'clock, coming out of 
Murat's (who was then Governor of Paris), and who had just given 
orders for the formation of the military commission. 

As to the supposed letter written by the Due d'Enghien, the persons 
about the Due declared that he never wrote a letter at Strasburg. As 
Murat'himself blamed the execution, and did what he could to avert it, 
there is some probability that, if M. de Talleyrand sought Murat, it was 
with the view of seeing what could be done to save the prince, and not 
with the view of destroying him. On the other hand, Bourrienne, who 
had opportunities of knowing the truth, asserts that M. de Talleyrand, 
so far from favouring this murder, warned the Due d'Enghien, through 
the Princess de Rohan, of the danger in which he stood. 

The Due Dalberg, minister of Baden at Paris in 1804, also speaks of 
M. de Talleyrand as opposed to all that was done in this affair. 

Louis XVIII., to whom M. de Talleyrand wrote when the Due de 
Rovigo's statement appeared, ordered that personage to appear no more 
at his court. Fouche declared the act to be entirely that of the first 
consul ; and lastly, Napoleon himself always maintained that the act was 
his own, and justified it. 

Sir Henry Bulwer, after weighing all the evidence before him, is per- 
suaded that the first consul had determined either to put the prince in 
his power to death, or to humiliate him by a pardon granted at his 
request ; and it seems not improbable that he hesitated, though rather 
disposed, perhaps, to punish than to spare, till all was over. 

As to Talleyrand taking an active part in this tragedy, such conduct 
would be in direct opposition to his whole character, and is unsup- 
ported by any trustworthy testimony. To have lent himself, even in 
appearance, to so dark a deed, and to have remained an instrument in 
Napoleon's hands after its committal, evinces a far stronger sense of the 
benefits attached to office, than of the obloquy attached to injustice. 
This, it is said, he did not deny ; and when a friend advised him to re- 
sign, is reported to have replied, " if Bonaparte has been guilty, as you 
say, of a crime, that is no reason why I should be guilty of a folly." 

The execution of the Due d'Enghien took place on the 20th March. 
On the 7th of April, Pichegru, who had been arrested, was found 
strangled in his room, as some thought, by the police — as the govern- 
ment declared, by his own hands ; Georges Cadoudal, who had also 
been captured, suffered on the scaffold; andMoreau, after being brought 
before a tribunal which condemned him to two years' imprisonment, had 
this absurd sentence commuted into exile. Bonaparte, having thus struck 
terror into the partisans of the ancient dynasty, and having rid himself 
of his most powerful military rival, placed on his head, amidst the servile 
approbation of the legislature, and the apparent acquiescence of the 
nation, a crown which was solemnly consecrated by Pius VII. (2nd 
December, 1804.) — Abridgedfrom Sir H.Bulwer's Historical Characters, 
vol. i. pp. 219-229. 



LOUIS XIV. AND NAPOLEON I. 235 



NAPOLEON'S STAR OF DESTINY. 

Dr. Sigmond, in his remarks on Hallucination, says " There is scarcely 
a man of eminence who has written his biography, or laid open the 
secrets of his inmost soul, but has acknowledged some preternatural 
event in his life : the most sceptical have felt, at some period or other, 
a mental emotion, either a fantasia or a hallucination." 

This hallucination, however improbable, may be mistaken for a 
reality, without the reason of the individual being affected by it. Many 
great men have believed in the existence of their Star, or their guardian 
spirit, and hence they have not been unprepared to witness miraculous 
apparitions. 

Dr. De Boismont, in his Treatise on Hallucination (translated by R. 
T. Hulme), considers the distinctive character of such hallucinations 
as the above to be that they do not prejudice the conduct, and the in- 
dividual may maintain in the world a high reputation for virtue, ability, 
and wisdom ; often, indeed, we believe, they have served as an additional 
stimulus to the individual in carrying out the projects he had previously 
conceived. 

Many instances of this kind have occurred, the truth of which is 
guaranteed by the high position of the persons themselves, and by the 
undoubted veracity of those who were present. On the 4th of April, 
1846, M. Passy related, at the meeting of the Academie des Sciences 
Morales et Politiques, the following anecdote which he had from General 
Rapp. It appears that in 1806, the General, on his return from the 
Siege of Dantzic, having occasion to speak to the Emperor Napoleon, 
entered his cabinet without being announced. He found him in such 
profound meditation that his entrance was not noticed. The General 
seeing that he did not move, was afraid he might be indisposed, and 
purposely made a noise. Napoleon immediately turned round, and 
seizing Rapp by the arm, pointed to the heavens, saying, " Do you 
see that ?" The General made no reply ; being interrogated a second 
time, he answered that he perceived nothing. " W hat !" responded the 
Emperor, " you did not discover it > It is my star, it is immediately in 
front of you, most brilliant;" and, becoming gradually more excited, 
he exclaimed, " It has never abandoned me, I behold it on all great 
occasions ; it commands me to advance, and to me is a sure sign of 
success." 

Napoleon himself had, indeed, nearly fallen a victim to a hallucination 
of this kind. The young German who intended to assassinate Napoleon 
at Schonbrunn, also had visions. He saw the guardian genius of 
Germany, who commanded him to deliver his country 



LOUIS XIV. AND NAPOLEON I. — A PARALLEL. 
The foreign wars of Louis XIV. proceeded in great measure from the 
same ruling principles or prejudices of his mind. He disliked the Dutch, 
whom he considered as mercantile plebeians, heretics, and republicans, 



20,6 SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF NAPOLEON I. 

" a body formed of too many heads, which cannot be warmed by the fire 
of noble passions " (Instructions pour le Dauphin, vol. ii. p. 201) ; 
and he earned his antipathy to the grave, without having succeeded in 
subjecting that small nation, whose wealth excited enemies against him 
everywhere. It is impossible not to be struck with the similarity of 
prejudices in two men, however dissimilar in some respects, Napoleon I. 
and Louis XIV. The hatred of Napoleon against England, which he 
designated as a nation of shopkeepers, was like that of Louis against 
the Dutch, and it produced similar results to his empire. The same de- 
termination of establishing uniformity in everything ; the same mania 
for a unity and singleness of power, which both mistook for strength ; 
the same ambition of making France the ruling nation of Europe under 
an absolute ruler, were alike the dominant principles, or rather passions, 
of the " legitimate and Most Christian king," and of the plebeian 
"child and champion of the Revolution." Several of the plans and 
schemes of Louis XIV., relative to foreign conquests, were found in the 
archives, and were revived and acted upon by Bonaparte. 



SHORTSIGHTEDNESS OF NAPOLEON I. 

Although the 19th volume of the Correspondence of Napoleon I. (May 
to October, 1809) is less interesting to the general reader than many 
volumes which preceded it, to those who take pleasure in dwelling on a 
turning-point in a crisis of history, or who see in history a drama full 
of lessons taming to the pride of man, this volume will be of very great 
interest. Reflecting as it does the will and thought of the personage 
who, in 1809, was almost the arbiter of the Continent, it suggests how 
different might have been the destinies of Europe for many years had 
Napoleon, instead of devoting his strength to a scheme of Austrian con- 
quest and alliance, concentrated his enormous forces against the enemy 
in the Peninsula who was to lead to his final overthrow. And showing, 
as it does, that he never dreamt of a policy which now appears obvious, 
that the fate of his dynasty and of his Empire seemed to him to depend 
on the struggle in Germany, and that he considered the war in Spain as 
a secondary and inferior operation, it forms a very significant example of 
the incapacity of the finest intellect to interpret events and scan the 
future. This volume also, especially in the correspondence relating to 
the Peninsula and Walcheren, illustrates forcibly the inherent weakness 
of Napoleon's despotism in many respects ; how even in war it led re- 
peatedly to mistakes, false calculations, and failure ; how at any emer- 
gency that required efforts to be made spontaneously and with vigour, it 
could not rely on its docile instruments ; how jealous it proved of all 
national forces except those habituated to servitude. 

Napoleon's Peninsular letters, in fact, show that he did not even yet 
appreciate the real character and danger of the contest ; and they form 
a most remarkable commentary on the inevitable failure of strategy from 
a distance, and on the vices of the military system of the Empire. How 
little he conceived the ultimate issue to be even within the range of pos- 



CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 237 



sibility may be gathered from the following passage in a report, a striking 
example of the irony of fate : — 

" In considering the state of your Majesty's armies and the issue of 
English expeditions I can only rejoice to behold England making efforts 
disproportionate to her population, and to the requirements of her fleet. 
She wishes to struggle on land to the death with France • she will reap 
nothing but confusion and disgrace, and the French people 'will owe to jour 
Majesty the glory and the inexpressible advantage of a peace extorted 
<without risk on the sea from an enemy who believed that his insular 
situation protected him from our armies. Every serious enterprise of the 
English on the Continent is the forerunner of a general pacification .... 
Engaged in the struggle in Spain and Portugal, from which they cannot 
retreat with credit, the Peninsula will be the grave of their bravest men, 
and this loss will at last induce the people of England to desire peace and 
to detest those cruel statesmen who, through ambition and extravagant 
animosity, have made a proclamation of perpetual war, and have devoted 
this generation to strife and to tears." 

The victory of Wagram was the reward of Napoleon's ability and 
great exertions. It was not, however, as is well known, a triumph like 
Austerlitz, Jena, or Friedland ; and had the corps of the Archduke 
John been on the field at the decisive moment, it certainly would have 
ended differently. This battle, while it displayed once more the strategic 
art of the French Emperor, revealed also the comparative decline of the 
military forces of the Empire; the French conscripts and German auxi- 
liaries were very different from the veteran bands that had gathered 
round the eagles at Boulogne ; and, notwithstanding the lies of the 
bulletin, few guns and hardly a prisoner were taken. For a time, how- 
ever, it produced the results which Napoleon had anticipated in his cal- 
culations ; reluctant Germany acquiesced in the issue; and Austria once 
more submitted to the conqueror. At this juncture, the abdication of 
the Emperor of Austria was a project seriously in contemplation in pre- 
ference to the dynastic alliance, which was one of the causes of Napoleon's 
ruin ; had the first alternative been adopted, the course of history might 
have run differently during many years of the present century. — Times 
journal. 



CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 

In the Edinburgh Review we find the following fair and able appre- 
ciation of the character of Napoleon : 

" Sound philosophy and a sound morality equally forbid his being 
placed amongst the most illustrious characters ' whose names adorn 
the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature.' 
His principal characteristic was an insatiable and selfish ambition, to 
the gratification of which he sacrificed, without scruple or remorse, the 
interests and the happiness of all mankind. The good which he did 
bears no proportion to the misery of which he was, directly or in- 
directly, the cause : havoc, desolation, and death marked his terrible 
career, and in the prosecution of his designs and objects he trampled 



238 CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 

upon every principle of justice and humanity. He had no sympathy 
with his fellow-creatures, and regarded them with such profound con- 
tempt that he was indifferent to human suffering, and reckless of human 
life. It was not from any pleasure in shedding blood, but in order to 
strike terror into the Royalists, that he caused the Due d'Enghien to be 
kidnapped and put to death. When the deed was done, he recoiled 
from the odium to which he saw that it would expose him, endeavoured 
to shift it on his instrument, and to cast the blame upon his precipitate 
zeal, imitating the behaviour of Queen Elizabeth in respect to the exe- 
cution of the Scottish queen. Although he became a mighty monarch, 
he never was actuated by the feelings and sentiments of a gentleman, 
and he had a total and habitual disregard for truth. His testamentary 
approval of the attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington is alone 
sufficient to deprive him of all claim to the praise of magnanimity. 
Really great men, who have been enemies, have always esteemed and 
honoured each other, and it was reserved to Napoleon to reveal to the 
world the vindictive spite which rankled in his mind to the last against 
his great conqueror, by the bequest of a sum of money to his assassin. 
To a character tarnished with such defects, stained by so many crimes, 
and not elevated by any moral dignity, a career crowned by complete 
and enduring success must be considered an indispensable condition of 
the highest order of greatness ; and not only was this wanting to 
Napoleon, but his decline was even more rapid than his rise." 

M. Thiers concludes his History of the Consulate and the Empire with 
this emphatic estimate of the genius of his hero: 

" Assuredly we are not of those who reproach Napoleon with having 
on the 1 8th Br.umaire rescued France from the hands of the Directory, 
in which she would, perhaps, have perished. But because it may have 
been necessary to tear her from those feeble and corrupt hands, there 
was no reason to deliver her up body and soul to the powerful but rash 
hands of the conqueror of Rivoli and Marengo. Doubtless if ever a 
nation had an excuse for surrendering itself to a man, it was France, 
when in 1 800 she took Napoleon for her chief. It was no false anarchy 
that terrified the nation into chains. Alas, no ! Thousands of inno- 
cent victims had perished on the scaffold, in the prisons of the Abbaye, 
or in the waters of the Loire. The horrors of barbarous times had all 
at once reappeared in the midst of a terrified civilization. And even 
when these horrors passed away, the French Revolution still oscillated 
between the headsman from whom it was snatched, and the foolish 
emigrants who desired to make it go back through blood to an impos- 
sible past, while over this chaos the menacing sword of the foreigner 
was visible. At this moment there returned from the East a young 
hero, full of genius, who was everywhere the conqueror of nature and 
of men, wise, moderate, religious, and who seemed born to enchain the 
world. Never, surely, were people more excusable in giving themselves 
up to one man, for never was terror less simulated than that which they 
fled from, and never was genius more real than that in which they 
sought a refuge. And yet, after some years, this wise man became mad, 
mad with other folly than that of '93, though not less disastrous ; im« 



CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON I. 



2,39 



molated a million of men on fields of battle ; drew Europe upon France, 
which he left vanquished, drowned in her own blood, despoiled of the 
fruit of 20 years' victories, desolate, and having nothing to invigorate 
her but the germ of modern civilization within her. Who, then, could 
have foreseen that the wise man of t8oo would be the madman of 
181 2 and 1813 ? Yes, it might have been foreseen, had people called to 
mind that great power bears within itself an incurable folly — the temp- 
, tation of doing everything when one can do everything, even the evil 
after the good. Thus in this great career, where military men, adminis- 
trators, and politicians may find so much to learn, let citizens also learn 
this one thing— never to deliver up their country to one man, be he who 
he may, or be the circumstances what they may. In closing this long 
history of our triumphs and our reverses, it is the last cry which 
escapes from my heart— a sincere cry which I desire to see penetrate the 
heart of all Frenchmen, and show them that liberty should never be 
alienated, and that to escape being alienated it should never be abused." 

In the Times journal we find these retributive remarks : — 

" It seems absurd in the present day to deny that it was the boundless 
and selfish ambition of Napoleon which led to the two invasions of 
France, or to affirm that his fall was brought about by the coalition of 
hostile parties. Napoleon declared that France desired another Govern- 
ment ; and the men whom his insatiable and selfish ambition had forced 
to become his adversaries were the men of his own choice, and assuredly 
were neither Republicans nor Legitimists. The decree deposing him 
was drawn up by his own senators, and their proclamation of the 2nd 
of April, 1814, was as follows:— 

' Frenchmen ! On emerging from civil dissensions you chose for 
your chief a man who appeared on the theatre of the world with an air 
of grandeur. You reposed in him all your hopes ; those hopes which 
have been deceived; on the ruins of anarchy he has founded only 
despotism. He was bound in gratitude to, at least, become a French- 
man with you ; he has not done so. He has never ceased to undertake, 
without aim or motive, unjust wars, like an adventurer impelled by thirst 
for glory. In a few years he has destroyed at once your wealth and 
your population. Every family is in mourning, but he is regardless of 
our calamities. Possibly he still dreams of his gigantic designs, even 
after unheard-of reverses have punished in so signal a manner his pride 
and his abuse of victory. He has shown himself not even capable of 
reigning for the interests of his despotism. He has destroyed all that 
he wished to create. He has believed in no other power but that of 
force. Force now overwhelms him,— the just retribution of mad am- 
bition.' " 

Napoleon delighted in mortifying flatterers. After his return from 
Austerhtz, Denon presented him with silver medals, illustrative of h'rQ 
victories. The first represented a French eagle tearing an English 
leopard. " What's this ?" asked Napoleon. Denon explained. " Thou 
rascally flatterer, you say that the French eagle crushes the English 
leopard ; yet I cannot put a fishing-boat to sea that is not taken. I tell 
you it is the leopard that strangles the eagle. Melt down the medal and 



240 THE FRENCH INVASION OF RUSSIA. 

never bring me such another." He found similar fault with the medal 
of Austerlitz. " Put Battle of Austerlitz on one side, with the date; 
the French, Prussian, and Austrian eagles on the other, without dis- 
tinction — posterity will distinguish the vanquisher." 



TERRITORY AND MONEY-COST OF NAPOLEON'S WARS. 

By the treaty of Chaumont, France was to be reduced to its ancient 
limits ; Germany formed into a federative union ; Holland, Switzerland, 
and the lesser States of Italy, were to be independent ; Spain and Por- 
tugal were to have their ancient sovereigns ; and the restoration of the 
Bourbons left to the French people. If Napoleon refused these terms, 
the four Powers bound themselves to maintain against him each an army 
of 150,000; Great Britain paying, in addition, an annual subsidy of 
5.000,000/., besides 20/. for each foot, and 30/. for each horse-soldier 
short of her contingent. 

By the treaty of Paris, or rather Fontainebleau, Napoleon renounced 
for himself and his descendants the empire of France and the kingdom 
of Italy, but retained the title of emperor with the island of Elba, and 
an income of 2,500,000^ (or 104,166/. 3 s. 4a 1 .) from the revenues of 
the ceded countries, and 2,ooo,ooof. from that of France, besides 
an annuity of 1,000,000 francs for Josephine. Four hundred soldiers 
were given to him as a body-guard, and the Duchies of Parma and 
Placentia were settled on Maria Louisa and her son. 

By the treaty of Paris (18 15), France lost the fortresses of Landau, 
Sarre Louis, Philippeville, and Marienburg, with their adjacent territory ; 
Huningen was demolished ; all the frontier fortresses were to be held 
for five years, by an allied army of 1 50,000 men, under Wellington ; 
28,000,000/. were to be paid for the expenses of the war, besides 
29,500,000/. as indemnities for the spoliations inflicted on the different 
States during the Revolution, and 4,000,000/. to the minor States. So 
that the total sum France had to pay, besides maintaining the Army of 
Occupation, was 61,500,000/. — From Dates, Battles, and Events, by 
Lord Eustace Cecil, 1857. 

♦ 

THE FRENCH INVASION OF RUSSIA. 

In this vast project and the preparations for it, the character of its 
originator, Napoleon I., stands clearly revealed. In the selection of the 
point of attack, in the measures taken to assure success, in the organiz- 
ing his immense forces, in the dexterity with which his plans were con- 
cealed, we see the master of the art of war, the consummate strategist, 
the indefatigable administrator. But if we consider the design itself 
with reference to the state of Europe, to the true policy for the French 
Empire, and to the real resources of the French armies, it appears 
simply a splendid chimera, and its author a visionary carried away by 
the lust of conquest and unbridled ambition. Granting that Napoleon 
was stronger than the Czar, what chance had he of subjugating Russia l 



TALLEYRAND. 241 



Was he not certain to throw that Power once more into the arms of 
England ? Was he not for a chance incurring a peril of an evident and 
most terrible kind — the uprising of Europe against his despotism ? How 
insensate, too, the project appears when we remember that, at this very- 
juncture, Spain continued defiant and unsubdued, that an English 
General had established his hold over part of the Peninsula, that the 
pride and flower of the Imperial armies was being destroyed in this in- 
ternecine contest ! The scheme of invading Russia, in fact, was what 
M.Thiers describes it, "mere folly;" it was one of those extravagant 
conceptions, like that of attacking England in the East, or of setting up 
a universal Monarchy, which often overcame Napoleon's judgment. And 
its unreasonableness becomes even more apparent when we examine the 
nature and composition of the forces arrayed for this wonderful attempt. 
In this respect Napoleon's Correspondence contains a number of interesting 
details, and throws a good deal of new light on the subject. The best 
and most faithful soldiers of France were engaged in 1811-12 in the 
struggle beyond the Pyrenees, consumed in skirmishes with theguerillas, 
misdirected by generals at feud with each other, or baffled by the un- 
conquerable warriors whom Wellington was conducting to victory. The 
gigantic hosts that were to enter Russia were made up, to a consider- 
able extent, of allies or subjects beyond old France, of the contingents 
of the Confederation of the Rhine, of Italians, Spaniards, and Portu- 
guese, of the reluctant conscripts of Belgium and Holland, of the half 
savage mercenaries of the Illyrian provinces. Was this vast congeries 
of motley races, indifferent, ill-trained, or hostile, an army fitted to carry 
the fortunes of the Empire across resentful Germany, to affront the 
perils of a Russian campaign, to bear with devotion extraordinary hard- 
ships ? The failure of Napoleon's manoeuvres at the very outset of the 
war, the comparative slowness of his advance, and the frightful horrors 
of the retreat from Moscow, caused not only by the severity of the cold, 
but by reckless indiscipline and despair, are the answers of history to 
this question. — Times journal. 



SUCCESS OF TALLEYRAND. 

Not long before the death of Talleyrand, an able English writer, 
speaking of his brilliant apophthegms, said : " What are they all to the 
practical skill with which this extraordinary man has contrived to baffle 
all the calamities of thirty years, full of the ruin of all power, ability, 
courage, and fortune ? Here is the survivor of the age of the Bastile, the 
age of the guillotine, the age of the prison-ship, the age of the sword. 
After baffling the Republic, the Democracy, the Despotism, and the 
Restoration, he figures in his eightieth year as the Ambassador to England, 
the Minister of France, and retires from both offices only to be chief 
counsellor, almost the coadjutor of the king. That where the ferocity 
of Robespierre fell, where the sagacity of Napoleon fell, where the ex- 
perience of the Bourbons fell, this one old man, a priest in a land of 
daring spirits, where conspiracy first and soldiership after, were the great 

R 



242 LORE IN THE FRENCH SENATE. 

means of power, should survive all, succeed in everything, and retain his 
rank and influence through all changes, is unquestionably among the 
most extraordinary instances of conduct exhibited in the world.'* 



SUCCESSION TO THE THRONE OF FRANCE. 

Not a little remarkable is it to observe, that from the accession of 
Louis XI V. to the present time not a single king or governor of France 
— though none of them, with the exception ot Louis XVI 1 1., have been 
childless — has been succeeded at his demise by his son. Louis XIV. 
survived his son, his grandson, and several of his great-grandchildren, 
and was succeeded at last by one of the younger children of his grand- 
son, the Duke of Burgundy. Louis XV. survived his son, and was 
succeeded by his grandson. Louis XVI. left a son behind him ; but 
that son perished in the filthy dungeon to which the cruelties of the 
terrorists had confined him. The King of Rome, to whom Napoleon 
fondly hoped to bequeath the boundless empire he had won, died a 
colonel in the Austrian service. Louis XVIII. was, as we have said, 
childless. The Duke de Berri fell by the hand of an assassin in the 
lifetime of Charles X. ; and his son, the Duke de Bordeaux, is an exile 
from the land which his ancestors regarded as their own estate. The 
eldest son of Louis Philippe perished by an untimely accident ; and his 
grandson and heir does not sit upon the throne of his grandfather. Thus, 
then, it appears that for upwards of two hundred years, in no one of the 
dynasties to which France has been subjected has the son succeeded to 
the throne of the father. — Times journal, 1856. 



HISTORICAL LORE IN THE FRENCH SENATE. 

Baron Dupin, in a speech in the French Senate, is reported to have 
made the following astounding statement : — 

" La France occupe, depuis quatorze siecles, le premier rang parmi les 
nations Chretiennes. Clovis, quand il eut ete baptise par l'influence de 
la Reine Clotilde, passa en Italie, pour forcer les Lombards a respecter 
le Saint Pere ; il merita ainsi le nom de fils aine de l'Eglise." 

Can it be believed that this strange reading of national history caused 
no remark in the French Senate, — that none of the " fathers of the 
country " remembered what must be familiar to every schoolboy in 
France — viz., that Clovis, who was baptized at Reims, and who may 
well, for aught we know, have done so to please his wife Clotilde, never 
" went into Italy," where in his time the Lombards or Longobards had 
never been heard of, and where they could, therefore, never have been 
wanting in respect to the Holy Father ? What would the House of 
Lords say if told by one of their number that King Alfred spared the 
lives of the citizens of Calais, or that King Arthur was at the siege of 
Acre in Palestine? Yet the blunder would scarcely be more unaccount- 
able. — Letter to the Times, 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVIII. 243 



THE REIGN OF LOUIS XVIII. 

M. Ponjoulet, in his History of France from 18 14 to the present day, 
gives the following thoughtful and spirited portrait of this sovereign : — 

" Historians hostile to the House of Bourbon have not spared Louis 
XVIII., and they have assigned tohim as his sole meritthe pride of being 
King of France. But to the reign of Louis XVIII. attaches an impor- 
tance and a lustre peculiar to itself. This Prince was the man of his 
time and of the circumstances reserved for his destiny. An Emperor 
who was always on horseback had fatigued the world. France, from 
her immense desire for repose, was not displeased at having a King 
quietly seated in his arm-chair, but whose fathers had known what 
battles were. The nation was vexed and wearied out by a restless and 
terrible will ; and a sovereign whom his infirmities unfitted for a life of 
activity was, as it were, naturally sent to establish among us a constitu- 
tional system of government. Amid the disasters which an ambition that 
had grown to insanity brought upon us, we wanted a King, the most 
ancient of kings, who could speak from the height on which the grandeur 
of twelve centuries placed him ; a King whose misfortunes invested with 
interest ; whose soul was thoroughly French ; whose moderation inclined 
him to political compromises; and whose clear perception enabled him 
at his mature age to judge of men and things. Such a King was found 
in Louis XVIII. Never was any prince's position more difficult than 
his ; he had so many knots ot policy to unloose that he left each for its 
own hour, and acted with hesitation. Called to bear the sceptre at a 
late period of life, he had, nevertheless, during his long experience, 
acquired a considerable knowledge of mankind. His will was persistent 
even when he appeared to yield. Nothing troubled him: his soul was 
firm, and his intellect keen ; but why should we not admit that he was 
crafty ? Politics are so intricate that a little subtlety is pardonable in a 
constitutional Sovereign. Sly, but not malignant, he satisfied or revenged 
himself with quotations from Horace. Ever master of himself, he was 
ever courteous ; and politeness presupposes a certain kindness of dis- 
position and a command of one's self. Had Louis XVIII. been hasty or 
passionate he could not have performed the task which Providence 
marked out for him. The eighteenth century had left its marks in his 
thoughts ; but if at times the man was frivolous, the King was never so. 

" During the ten years of his reign he practised in all sincerity the re- 
presentative regime, and it is to the constitutional predominance of this 
or that political system that should be assigned the successive changes 
in the conduct of Louis XVIII.'s Government. He delivered us 
promptly from the foreign armies which, it was pretended, he needed to 
prop up his throne. He paid our ransom, and debts which were none 
of his incurring ; he gave us liberty, re-established our credit, led us 
once more to glory, and imparted to our country an immense movement 
of confidence. Conspiracy was ever busy during his reign, and, in 
spite of the assaults on his crown, if he only consulted his heart, not a 
drop of blood would have been shed. Napoleon had exhibited the 

R2 



244 THE ORLEANS FAMILY, 

terror of the sword ; Louis XVIII. displayed the power of the sceptre, 
and that power was for us liberal and conservative. After so many 
terrible shocks, after the excesses of brute force, people had lost all notion 
of the majesty of right. They saw it appear in its calmer grandeur. 
Louis XVIII. showed it living and invincible. The axe might cut it 
down, but intimidation would not make it bend. On the 24th of Octo- 
ber, 1824, were celebrated, in presence of a vast concourse of people, 
and pursuant to the ceremonial of the ancient monarchy, the obsequies 
of the King. The coffin reposed for a month in the Church of St. 
Denis, was lowered by twelve of the Body Guard into those vaults from 
which the remains of his ancestors had been torn thirty years before. 
The Grand Master of the Royal Household reversed his staff of com- 
mand, and cried, ' the King is dead !' and the King-at-Arms having 
answered, ' Long live the King !' the cry was repeated by all present to 
the sound of trumpets and drums, and, amid military music, Louis 
XVIII. went to his sleep where his fathers had slept; and Charles X., 
whose accession was proclaimed by the cannon outside the church, was 
fated not to attend the rendezvous to which his brother summoned him. 
The vaults of St. Denis await in vain his royal remains, as the palaces 
also await in vain the return of their ancient inmates." 



THE ORLEANS FAMILY. 

Immediately after the death of Queen Marie Amelie, appeared in print 
this semi-official notification from the friends of the Orleans family, of 
their correction of two opinions which are founded in error. " In the 
first place, the Queen has been generally represented as separated in 
politics from the King, and as confining herself, consequently, to her 
duties as wife and mother. The Queen may have regretted that the 
Revolution of 1830 called her husband from the happiness of private 
life to impose upon him the trials and dangers of government ; but she 
sympathized with her whole heart with all the acts of a reign which for 
eighteen years gave order and liberty to France. She was proud of the 
King, she was proud of his government, and in her exile she loved to 
recal all that he had done for France. In the second place, during the 
events of 1848 an entirely romantic role has been attributed to the 
Queen, in order to contrast her courage with the pretended weakness of 
the King. With this intention a scene is related which never existed 
except in the poetic imagination of M. de Lamartine and the diplomatic 
imagination of Lord Normanby. The personal courage of the King 
does not admit of a doubt ; he gave too many proofs of it, from Je- 
mappesto the last of the too numerous attempts. at assassination of which 
he was the object. One may approve or blame his political conduct in 
1848, but it is impossible to doubt that it was dictated purely by 
political scruples. The time had not yet come when it would seem 
only natural to establish one's supremacy by striking terror into the 
people of Paris. Is it not to be regretted that in these tributes of re- 
spect and admiration to the dead Queen, so many writers should have 



GREAT POLITICAL MONTH OF JULY, 245 

carelessly repeated what would have most surprised and troubled her 
had it been said during her life? Such mistakes are common in our 
daily literature, but it is, perhaps, wise to correct them when it regards 
a family whose honour is dear to the French nation. The time will 
come when the humane and conscientious scruples of King Louis 
Philippe, in 1848, will constitute one of the strongest titles of his family 
in the eyes of his countrymen." 



THE GREAT POLITICAL MONTH OF JULY. 

A writer in the Steele, in 1866, recommended the learned Academics 
of the French Institute to offer a prize for an Essay which shall best ex- 
plain why revolutions, battles, t and the great political events which in- 
fluence the destinies of nations, generally take place in the month of July, 
as also the relations that exist between the temperature of the atmosphere 
and the revolutionary and combative temperament of men. Those 
learned bodies often propose questions of little or no practical advantage ; 
and why, he asks, should they not invite investigation on a subject of 
such vital importance to mankind ? The fact of the month of July 
having this peculiarity is unquestionable. The States- General, convoked 
by Louis XVI., in 1789, met on the 5th of May, the day when Mirabeau 
addressed his memorable defiance to the Marquis de Dreux-Breze, who 
was sent to expel the representatives from their Hall, but two months 
elapsed before the first great act of the Revolution was performed. The 
people had their eyes long turned to the Bastile, but they waited for the 
burning rays of July to attack and take it. Forty years passed away, 
during which the greatest events of which history makes mention, took 
place throughout Europe, — the wars of the Republic, the Reign of 
Terror, the Consulate, the Empire, the Invasion, the Restoration. The 
rights which the people had gained at so much cost were menaced by 
Charles X. Had he tried his coup d'etat against the press a month 
sooner or a month later it might have succeeded like that of the 18th 
Brumaire. But the revolutionary sun of July darted its fiery beams on 
the streets and squares of Paris, and in three days the Government, with 
an army at its back, was overthrown for ever. Great heat and great 
cold seem to produce similar effects on the human temperament. Re- 
volution of July, or Revolution of February, it is all one from his point 
of view ; the same effect is produced by the same cause. It was during 
the heat of summer that the independence of Italy was won. It was in 
July that the structure raised on the Treaties of 18 15 fell in the dust ; 
that Austria was vanquished at Koniggratz and Sadowa, excluded from 
the Germanic Confederation, and Venetia given over to France to be 
transferred to Italy ; and, observes the writer, " it was while Austria 
was humbled, and the reactionists of Europe lost all the ground which 
they held since 1815, that the electors of a French college signified their 
decision to one of the most illustrious champions of the Catholic and 
feudal reaction. The defeat of M. de Falloux in the department of the 
Maine-et-Loire is the defeat of Austria seen from the large end of the 



246 DEFEAT OF THE IMPERIAL GUARD. 

telescope !" It is not for the idle pleasure of pointing out the singu- 
larity of the month of July that M. Louis Jourdan notices these events. 
He professes ultra- Liberalism, and if he rejoices in the victories of 
Prussia it is only because they complete Italian independence and humble 
Catholic Austria. He continues : — 

" Yes, the defeat of Austria is one of the most remarkable victories 
won by the Revolution. Vienna was the head-quarters of the reaction ; 
a sort of chapel of ease to Rome ; the centre of all counter-revolutionary 
intrigues. Had Austria been victorious, the labours of our fathers would 
have to be begun again ; the people would again have been bowed to the 
yoke ; Venetia would have remained an Austrian province. All the 
blood shed in Italy during the glorious campaign of 1859 would have 
been shed in vain. The reaction was re-appearing to dictate its con- 
ditions ; but Austria is now prostrate, anjd since the month of July last 
our principles have again made way." 

M. Jourdan does not elucidate the point he set out with, — why all 
these great events take place in the month of July. 



DEFEAT OF THE IMPERIAL GUARD AT WATERLOO. 

The Rev. William Leeke, who formerly, as an ensign of the 52nd, 
carried the colours of that distinguished corps at Waterloo, has pub- 
lished a History of his old regiment, in which he claims for it the credit 
of having defeated the Imperial Guard at Waterloo, a feat hitherto 
attributed to the Guards. Mr. Leeke makes out a strong case in favour 
of the 52nd, and corroborates it by the following anecdote : — 

" Shortly after the 52nd reached Paris and were encamped in the Champs 
Elys^es, Sir John Colborne gave us the following account of what Sir John 
Byng had said, on meeting him a day or two before. He said : — ' How do 
your fellows like our getting the credit of doing what you did at Waterloo ? I 
could not advance when you did, because all our ammunition was gone.' 
Some little time afterwards, when Sir John Colborne met Byng, and tried to 
lead him to speak on the subject again, he found him quite disinclined to do 
so. Many years afterwards, I think it was in 1850, when I was dining with 
Lord Seaton in town, one of his sons requested me to try and draw his father 
out to talk about Waterloo, saying that he often told them about his other 
battles, but they could not get him to speak much about that. I took an oppor- 
tunity of asking him if he recollected much about Waterloo, and I suppose I 
particularized the charge of the 52nd, on the Imperial Guard, for I remember 
he said, 'Did you ever hear what Sir John Byng said to me at Paris?' I 
replied that I had a very distinct recollection of it, but that I should be very 
much obliged to him if he would repeat to me what Sir John Byng had said, in 
order that I might see if my recollection of it exactly tallied with his. Lord 
Seaton then gave me the account of what passed on the two occasions of his 
meeting Byng, just as I have related it above, and exactly as I remember to 
have heard' it from him 35 years before in the camp at Paris." 



247 




THE NATIONAL DEBT.* 

RAVE apprehensions were expressed, just after the great Re- 
volution in 1688, at the magnitude of our Debt. One writer 
declared, six years after this great event happened, " that not 
one man in a hundred would have contributed to it, if they 
could have foreseen how it would have helped to the utter beggaring of 
ourselves by the decay of traffic and unsupportable taxes." 

Lord Lyttelton, who, as an historian, ought to have been better in- 
structed, writing in 1739, said, " that our credit was sunk at home and 
abroad, the people dispirited and discontented, because we owed almost 
forty millions." 

Again, Lord Bolingbroke, a statesman singularly well acquainted 
with the affairs of Europe, and a philosopher not accustomed to indulge 
in restricted ideas, says in his Reflections on the State of the Nation, prin- 
cipally (with regard to her Taxes and her Debts, their causes and their 
consequences, "Our Parliamentary aids from the year 1740 exclusively to 
the year 1748, amount to 55,522,159/. i6j. 3d., and the new Debt we 
have contracted to more than thirty millions, a sum that will appear in- 
credible to future generations." 

Hannay, another writer, speaking on the same subject in 1756, says, 
" It has been a general notion amongst political arithmeticians that we 
may increase our Debt to one hundred millions ; but they acknowledged 
that it must then cease by the debtor becoming bankrupt. But it is 
very difficult to comprehend, if we do not stop at seventy-five millions, 
where we shall stop." 

Hume, Adam Smith, Dr. Price, Lord Kaimes, and many other writers 
during the last century, asserted we had actually reached the goal of 
national ruin. Yet, judging from all that has passed in fiscal adminis- 
tration during the present century, and drawing information from what- 
ever quarter we may, there is no reason for crediting the statement made 
a few years before the revolution, that " a kind of common consump- 
tion hath crowded upon us;" still less is there any reason for fearing 
either a diminution of the national wealth or that the increasing power 
and progress of the country will decline. In the words of Dryden: 

We know those blessings which we must possess, 
And judge of future by past happiness. 



During the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, he wanted to carry- 
question in the House of Commons, to which he knew there would 



* The Rev. C. H. Hartshorne : Journal of the British Archceological Asso- 
ciation, 1865. 



248 "ALL MEN HAVE THEIR PRICE: 1 

be great opposition, and which was disliked by some of his own de- 
pendents. As he was passing through the Court of Requests (in the 
old palace at Westminster), he met a member of the Opposition, whose 
avarice he imagined would not reject a large bribe. He took him aside, 
and said, " Such a question comes on this day ; give me your vote, and 
here is a bank-bill of 2000/./' which he put into his hands. The mem- 
ber made him this answer: "Sir Robert, you have lately served some 
of my particular friends ; and when my wife was last at court, the King 
was very gracious to her, which must have happened at your instance. 
I should, therefore, think myself very ungrateful {putting the bank-bill 
into bis pocket) if I were to refuse the favour you are now pleased to 
ask me." 

Sir Robert was called the Grand Corrupter in the libels of his time : 
he is said to have thought all mankind rogues, and to have remarked that 
every one had his price. Pope refers to this : 

Would he oblige me, let me only find 

He does not think me what he thinks mankind. 

Or as he at first printed it : 

He thinks one poet of no venal kind. 

That Walpole said something very much like the saying attributed 
to him is what even his son does not deny ; but there is reason to be- 
lieve that he said it with a qualification — " all those men have their 
price," not "all men have their price." 

The saying as recorded by Richardson, the painter, who had ample 
means of being well-informed, was in these words : " There was not 
one, how patriot soever he might seem, of whom he did not know the 
price." (Richardsoniana, 8vo, 1776, p. 178.) Dr. King, whose means 
of information were as good as Richardson's, records a remark made 
during a debate in Parliament by Walpole to Mr. W. Leveson, the 
brother of the Jacobite Lord Gower. " You see," said Sir Robert, 
" with what zeal and vehemence these gentlemen oppose ; and yet I 
know the price of every man in this house except three, and your brother 
is one of them." Dr. King adds, that Sir Robert lived long enough to 
know that my Lord Gower had his price as well as the rest. (King's 
Anecdotes, p. 44.) His son modifies the saying : " Some are corrupt," 
Sir Robert Walpole said ; " but I will tell you of one who is not ; 
Shippen is not." {Walpoliana, i. 38.) And Sir Robert said, that " it 
was fortunate so few men could be prime ministers, as it was best that 
few should thoroughly know the shocking wickedness of mankind. I 
never heard him say that all men had their prices ; and I believe no such 
expression ever came from his mouth/' 

Lord Brougham, also, doubts whether the above words were ever 
used by Walpole ; or, if used, whether they are properly interpreted. 
" His famous saying that ' all men have their price,' " said Lord 
Brougham, "can prove nothing unless ' price' be defined ; and if a 
large and liberal sense is given to the word, the proposition more re- 



BRIBING MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT. 249 

sembles a truism than a sneer, or an ebullition of official philanthropy. 
But it has been positively affirmed that the remark was never made ; for 
It is said that an important word is omitted, which wholly changes the 
sense ; and that Walpole only said, in reference to certain actions of 
profligate adversaries, and their adherents resembling themselves, " All 
these men have their price." (Coxe's Life of Walpole, vol. i. p. 757.) His 
general tone oi sarcasm, when speaking of patriotism and political 
gratitude, and others of the more fleeting virtues, is well-known. 
" Patriots," he said, " are easily raised ; I have myself made many a 
one. "Tis but to refuse an unreasonable demand, and up springs a 
patriot !" So, the gratitude of political men he defined to be "a lively 
sense of favours to come." — A Century of Anecdote, vol. i. 



BRIBING MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT. 

About the year 1767 one Roberts, who had been Secretary to the 
Treasury, and Mr. Pelham, divulged some strange details of the mode 
in which the House of Commons was managed in his time, when a 
number of members received from him, at the end of every session, a 
stipend in bank notes, the sums varying from 500/. to 800/. per annum. 
Roberts, on the day of the Prorogation, took his stand in the Court of 
Requests, and as the gentlemen passed, in going to or returning from 
the House, Roberts conveyed the money in a squeeze of the hand. The 
names of the recipients were entered in a book, which was preserved 
with the deepest secrecy, it being never inspected by any one except the 
King and Mr. Pelham. On the decease of that minister, in 1 754, his 
brother, the Duke of Newcastle, and others of the succeeding Cabinet, 
were anxious to obtain information of the private state of the House, 
and besought Roberts to give up the book containing the names of the 
bribed. This Roberts refused to do, except by the King's command, 
and to his majesty in person. Of this refusal the ministers acquainted 
the King, who sent for Roberts to St. James's, where he was introduced 
into the closet, more than one of the ministers being present. George 
II. ordered him to return him the book in question, which injunction 
was complied with. At the same time, taking the poker in his hand, 
the King put it into the fire, made it red hot, and thrust the book into 
the flames, where it was immediately burnt. He considered it too con- 
fidential a register to be transferred to the new ministers, and as having 
become extinct with the administration of Mr. Pelham. 

Another official person, who had been private secretary to the Earl of 
Bute, and seventeen years Treasurer of the Ordnance, testified to the 
Peace ot 1763 having been carried by money: he secured above 120 
votes, with 80,000/. set apart for the purpose, forty members receiving 
1000/. and 500/. each. — A Century of Anecdote, vol. i. 



PREROGATIVE OF THE CROWN. 



SUPPOSED PREROGATIVE OF THE CROWN IN MATTERS 
OF PEACE, WAR, AND ALLIANCES. 

~ It is a generally-accepted doctrine that all that relates to Peace, War, 
or Alliances, falls peculiarly within the prerogative of the Crown ; and 
that Parliament, the Grand Council of the Nation, has no right to in- 
terpose its authority, or even its advice, in such a manner as to restrain, 
even in semblance, the free action of the Sovereign. In pursuance of 
this theory, if a member of Parliament, as has occurred occasionally 
within our time, should venture to ask a question of the minister as to the 
provisions of a Treaty of Peace, or of Commerce, whilst in course of 
negotiation, he is very curtly put down with a reply to the effect that, 
according to " the spirit and practice of the Constitution," to use 
Lord Palmerston's words in reference to the treaty on the Danish ques- 
tion, the contents of a treaty cannot be in any way discussed or referred 
to until after its ratification by the Sovereign. In the course of a series 
of articles entitled " Notes on Diplomacy and Diplomatic History," by 
Mr. Henry Ottley, published in Erasers Magazine (Aug. — Dec. 
1864), this position is stoutly resisted, abundance of authority being 
cited to the contrary. This writer affirms that the venerable Gothic 
institutions of the Middle Ages were imbued with the principles of 
freedom, and carried checks upon the royal authority to a degree hardly 
conceivable by those who view the recent history of European States. 
It was not until towards the 15th century, when the potentates became 
almost despotic, that this principle was suppressed, and the prerogative 
of the Crown raised in its place. In Germany the Emperor was subor- 
dinated to the Diet in all that related to war and alliances. In Hungary, 
Bohemia, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, also. By the capitulation of 
Matthias with the Hungarian States, so late as 1615, it was stipulated 
that there should be no measures of peace or war without the consent 
of the Diet, and this was ratified by Ferdinand and his successors. In 
the various kingdoms of the Spanish peninsula the monarch was elected 
with restricted powers, particularly in matters of peace and war, until a 
comparatively modern period, the times indeed of the Hapsburgs and 
the Bourbons. In France from the earliest times the same principle pre- 
vailed. Charles the Bald, the first of a long line of Princes, promised 
his nobles not to undertake any matters of State policy without their 
concurrence, and during many reigns this principle was insisted upon, 
and strictly adhered to. It was under Charles VII., and Louis XL, 
that arbitrary rule in these matters began to be introduced. But 
Philip de Comines, in his Memoirs, denounced the innovation. " It 
may be objected," he said, " that in some cases there may not be time 
to assemble them (the representatives of the people), and that war will 
bear no delay ; but I reply that such haste ought not to be made, and 
there will be time enough ; and I tell you that princes are more power- 
ful and more dreaded by their enemies when they undertake anything 
with the consent of their subjects." 
Mr. Ottley goes on to remark that in England these rights and consti- 



PREROGATIVE OF THE CROWN \ 251 

tutional liberties, derived from a common source with those of Europe 
generally, survived long after despotism had asserted its domain in con- 
tinental states, and were asserted with boldness, dignity, and authority 
until within the present century. Citing the Rolls of Parliament as his 
authority, he maintains and shows that from the time of William the 
Conqueror down to that of George III., there was, with perhaps a 
single exception, afterwards referred to, " no measure of war or peace 
undertaken without the previous advice and consent of Parliament." 
Amongst numerous cases cited it may be satisfactory to reproduce the 
following. Edward III. called together no less than sixteen parliaments 
to advise with them in matters of war, peace, and alliances. In the fifth 
year of his reign he called a Parliament to consult upon the then state 
of his differences with the King of France, asking their advice whether 
he should refer them to arbitration, or treat amicably with him, or 
proceed to open war. " The prelates, earls, barons, and other great 
men, thereupon advised in favour of a treaty ; and the King in Parlia- 
ment, and with its consent, named the commissioners for this treaty, 
and part of their powers and business was then prescribed to them.'' 
Nor were these submissions to Parliamentary authority mere matters of 
form. In the thirty-sixth year of the same monarch, an offer of peace 
from Robert Bruce of Scotland having been referred to the Lords, they 
unanimously answered that "they could not assent to it, as prejudicial 
to the King's Crown," 

In the seventh year of the reign of Richard II. a very curious case 
occurs, in which the reason is fairly stated why the people ought to 
be consulted, not only before making war, but in making peace also. 
The making of a treaty with France was then under consideration, 
but the Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, told both Houses " that 
the King, out of tender love to his people, and in consideration of 
the great expenses they had been at during the war, would not finally 
conclude the peace without their assent and knowledge;" and then 
went on to say, "though he might do it, because (as it was con- 
ceived) France was the King's own proper inheritance, and not 
belonging to the Crown of England." The exception suggested rather 
than asserted in the latter passage is very significant, as proving the 
existence of a rule, and its unquestioned authority. The Chancellor, in 
fact, concluded by declaring " that the King desired and earnestly 
charged them carefully to examine and consider the said articles in 
relation to this treaty, and advise what was best to be done for the 
kingdom's honour and advantage." It was under the Stuarts that the 
infraction of this ancient constitutional principle was attempted, and 
" prerogative " asserted in matters of war, peace, and State policy ; and 
these pretensions led to contests which ended in the extermination of 
the dynasty. William III. and Queen Anne, throughout the long 
foreign wars in which the country was then engaged, constantly and as 
a matter of admitted duty and acknowledged caution, applied to the 
authority and advice of Parliament on all projects of peace and 
war. During the long negotiations which led to the Treaty of Utrecht, 
Parliament was frequently applied to in this way. On the nth June, 



252 MARITIME SUPREMACY OF ENGLAND. 

1 7 T2, for instance, the Queen came down to the House of Peers, and 
stated to both Houses, in a long speech, " the terms on which peace 
might be made," for, as was stated at the time, " such was the caution 
of the Lord Treasurer, that he was determined to conclude nothing 
without the previous sanction of Parliament." 

On the accession of the House of Hanover, the wholesome and 
constitutional principle of Parliamentary control in State affairs first 
began to be seriously invaded ; but the resistance offered to the 
encroachments of prerogative was uncompromising in character, and 
affords many noble passages in Parliamentary history, and was in 
the main successful. The only notable infraction of the Parlia- 
mentary authority was in the case of the war with Sweden, under 
George I., accompanied by the nefarious purchase of Bremen and 
Verden, as additions to the Hanoverian possessions of the King. But 
on this and other occasions Parliament manfully asserted its powers, 
which George II. and George III. had to yield, insomuch that not a 
single treaty of peace was agreed to in either reign without being sub- 
mitted for the approval of Parliament, down to and including that of 
Amiens in 1 802, which was discussed and considerably modified in its 
preliminaries. The war with the French Republic and Empire ,was 
indeed the first commencement of the almost independent Government 
action which has prevailed since ; and the Treaty of Vienna — unpropi- 
tious example ! — was the first solemn act of the sort engaged in by the 
monarch of this country without the advice and authority of Parliament. 
Nor did the proceeding pass unnoticed : on the contrary, it formed the 
subject of severe comment and repudiation, which are recorded in the 
Parliamentary reports of the day. 



MARITIME SUPREMACY OF ENGLAND. 

Mr. Froude in the latest volume of his History of England has dedi- 
cated an entire chapter to the development of a proposition which will 
probably take the present generation by surprise. He tells us, and tells 
us truly, that the Maritime Supremacy of England originated in suc- 
cessful piracy. That the practice was justified or disguised by many 
persuasions peculiar to the times is not to be denied ; but, except for the 
consideration due to these views, it would be difficult to describe the 
system by any other name than that applied to the deeds of the most 
desperate rovers. The age, too, in which these customs prevailed was 
not a remote age, like that of the Sea Kings of the North. It was the 
age of Queen Elizabeth and Shakspeare ; and yet in those days the gen- 
tlemen of our maritime counties, men of good lineage and respectable 
education, thought it no shame to fit out ships for the express purpose 
of robbing other ships. Strange to say, there was a religious impulse in 
the matter. The common prey of these adventurers was the Spaniard, and 
the Spaniard was an object of abhorrence and dread as the champion of 
Papal fanaticism. So the Protestant gentlemen of England made war upon 
the great adversary, and plundered his treasure ships with the comfortable 



MARITIME SUPREMACY OF ENGLAND. 253 

conviction that they were making righteous as well as handsome profits, 
until in the end their adventures produced that intrepid and skilful race 
of seamen who afterwards defeated the Armada, and founded the mari- 
time power of Britain. 

Mr. Froude thereon proceeds to remarks: "the ancient Greeks, 
says Thucydides, even those not lowest in rank among them, when they 
first crossed the seas, betook themselves to piracy. Falling on unprotected 
towns or villages they plundered them at their pleasure, and from this 
resource they derived their chief means of maintenance. The employ- 
ment carried no disgrace with it, but rather glory and honour ; and in 
the tales of our poets, when mariners touch anywhere, the common 
question is whether they are pirates — neither those who are thus ad- 
dressed being ashamed of their calling, nor those who inquire meaning 
it as a reproach. 

" In the dissolution of the ancient order of Europe, and the spiritual 
anarchy which had reduced religion to a quarrel of opinions, the primi- 
tive tendencies of human nature for a time asserted themselves, and the 
English gentlemen of the 16th century passed into a condition which, 
with many differences, yet had many analogies with that of the Grecian 
chiefs. With the restlessness of new thoughts, new hopes and prospects, 
with a constitutional enjoyment of enterprise and adventure, with a 
legitimate hatred of oppression, and a determination to revenge their 
countrymen, who from day to day were tortured and murdered by the 
Inquisition, most of all, perhaps, with a sense that it was the mission of 
a Protestant Englishman to spoil the Amalekites — in other words, the 
gold ships from Panama, or the richly-laden Flemish traders — the mer- 
chants at the seaports, the gentlemen whose estates touched upon the 
creeks and rivers, and to whom the sea from childhood had been a 
natural home, fitted out their vessels under the name of traders, and sent 
them out armed to the teeth with vague commissions to take their chance 
of what the gods might send." 

Our Supremacy of the Sea may be said to date from the reign of 
Henry VIII. In the summer of 1512, England fleshed its sword in a 
Continental war. But her first efforts were disastrous. A mutiny broke 
out at St. Sebastian, and the English army resolved to return home, in 
direct violation of the King's commands. Henry wrote to Ferdinand, 
with whom they had been sent to co-operate, to stop them at all hazards, 
and cut every man's throat who refused obedience. But the order came 
too late, and England incurred no insignificant disgrace. War was not 
the wish of Fox or Wolsey, but Wolsey was forced into it by this 
disaster until he became the very soul of the war. His vast influence 
with the King dates from this event. England was for the moment des- 
titute of military organization, but Wolsey, by his penetrative spirit, re- 
covered it at a bound. In his preparations he displayed an amount of 
forethought, energy, patience, and administrative genius not to be found 
in any other man of that age. Thus the expedition under Sir Edward 
Howard, which in April, 15 13, attacked the French galleys at Brest, 
and where Sir Edward fell a sacrifice to his impetuous valour, was sig- 
nally victorious, and retrieved the honour of the English name. It fas- 



2^4 PROPHECIES AND GUESSES. 

tened on the imagination of both nations. Jjronx this-man's example his 
countrymen jumped to the conviction thjU>nothing was too arduous, and 
no odds on the side of an enemy justified retreat. From this man's 
daring the world took the measure of English courage generally, and 
the French dared no longer dispute the possession of the narrow seas. — 
Times journal. 



PROPHECIES AND GUESSES. 

Among predictive marvels is the remarkable guess of M. Lumm, chap- 
lain of the Edinburgh gaol at the beginning of the present century. 
He had a habit of prophesying ; he predicted, for example, it is said, 
in 1804, that the Bourbons, then in Scotland, would be expelled France 
for ever in 1830, but of this there is no other evidence. It is quite certain, 
however, that the following was in type in 1842 : " In 1848 there would 
be a terrible convulsion, and there would be no peace till 1863." " In 
1868, there would be a restoration of peace to the Church, and all the 
true churches would be united. The Jews are to be restored to their 
own land, and to be a political power there, as in the days of Solomon. 
Russia is to be the instrument of restoring them." 

A prophecy of trouble is always safe, but the guess at the year in- 
volves a really notable coincidence. But which is the more probable, 
that an old gentleman always maundering about events to come, made 
in his lifetime one or two good guesses, or that the laws of nature were 
suspended in order that he should be an oracle in his own parlour ? 

Fleming's prophecies are more curious, and are believed even by educated 
men. This man, who wrote on the Apocalypse in 1701, undoubtedly did 
predict the fall of the French Monarchy " before 1794 ;" and he added 
a computation which, when corrected by the true length of the year, 
really brings him within a few days of the execution of Louis XVI. 
Fleming believed also that the Fifth Vial, which began in 1793, would 
end in 1 848 ; and the period did, undoubtedly, embrace a cycle of some 
sort, the battle, as it were, between the French people and the Capetian 
family occupying the whole time. But these are the only accurate 
"Prophecies of Fleming." The Rev. G. S. Faber, in 18 18, only three 
years after Waterloo, predicted the revival of the French Empire as 
absolutely essential to the fulfilment of prophecy, though he declined 
to pledge himself to the date. The simple fact is, that there exist hun- 
dreds of interpretations of the Revelations, and as all are constrained by 
the figures there given to keep within the nineteenth century, there must 
be several which light upon the year 1848. These alone are remem- 
bered, and Fleming, as the oldest among them, is regarded almost as a 
prophet. He was, in fact, a guesser, who guessed by rule, i. <?., by what 
he believed the mystic numbers in the Apocalypse to mean : and like 
all guessers by rule, he was once or twice right. — Spectator newspaper, 
1862. 



POTWALLOPERS. 255 



CHARACTER OF A TRIMMER. 

To George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, was this term first applied. 
Being hereditarily attached to the Stuarts, ambitious, and endowed with 
brilliant talents, he played an active and successful part in the intriguing 
reigns of Charles II. and James II. It is hard to state shortly his pc£ 
htical history or principles, except by saying that he was the chief of the 
body to which the expressive name of Trimmers was given. So far, 
however, as he was attached to any principle, it seems to have been the 
cause of civil liberty as then understood. He opposed the Non-resisting 
Test Bill in 1675, as well as, both in those times and after the accession 
of James, the relaxation of the tests against the Papists. He opposed 
the scheme for excluding the Duke of York from the succession, pre- 
ferring to limit his authority when the crown should devolve on him. 
He declined to take part in bringing over the Prince of Orange ; but 
was president of the convention parliament, and strongly supported the 
motion for declaring the throne vacant. On the accession of William 
and Mary, he was made privy seal; but he soon retired from the ad- 
ministration, upon inquiry being proposed to be made as to the authors 
of the prosecutions of Lord Russell, Sidney, &c, in which he, as a 
member of the then existing government, had concurred; and he con- 
tinued in opposition thenceforward till his death. 

" He was," says Burnet, "a man of great and ready wit, full of life 
and very pleasant, much turned to satire .... He was punctual in his 
payments, and just in all private dealings, but with relation to the 
public he went backward and forward, and changed sides so often that 
m the conclusion no side trusted him; he seemed full of commonwealth 
notions, yet he went into the worst part of King Charles's reign. The 
liveliness of his imagination was always too hard for his judgment. His 
severe jest was preferred by him to all arguments whatever; and he was 
endless in council, for when, after much discourse, a point was settled, 
if he could find a new jest whereby he could make that which was di- 
gested by himself seem ridiculous, he could not hold, but would study 
to raise the credit of his wit, though it made others call his judgment 
into question," &c. His works are lively and elegant ; one is the " Cha- 
racter of a Trimmer." 



POTWALLOPERS. 

In the Gentleman s Magazine, June, 1 852, p. 387, Mr. J. Gough Nichols 
notices at least three distinct meanings of the verb to wallop ; first to 
gallop ; secondly, to drub ; thirdly, to boil. This last meaning has been 
generally received and recognised in explanation of the familiar term 
potwallopers. To boil is in Sa. wealan, and in Ger. wallen ; to boil up, 
Ger. aufcivallen, Old Du. opwallen. We here, it has been supposed' 
transfer the particle from the beginning of the word to the end, as we do 
m many other instances; so that op<w alien becomes <wallenop (to boil up) 
or wallop. Mr. Nichols is disposed to question this derivation ; giving 



2 5 6 MRS. PARTINGTON. 

it at the same time as his opinion that the original term was not pot- 
ewalloper, but potavaller, or potnvealer, which, however, comes to the 
same thing. Yet, on behalf of the word potwalloper, we may urge 
an independent plea. Potwallopers were not only those recognised 
constituents who had in some places acquired the right of suffrage by 
keeping house, and boiling a pot, i. e., maintaining themselves without 
charitable or parochial aid. The term also included "every poor 
wretch " who belonged to the parish, and was " caused to boil a pot " 
in order to qualify him as a voter ; and this was sometimes done by 
erecting a thing like a chimney in a field or in the street, where they 
kindled a fire, on which they boiled a pot ! This, it is clear, was some- 
thing like manufacturing fictitious votes, and voting in a fictitious cha- 
racter. Now, in old German law-Latin, walapaus (walapa, walpor, 
ewalaput) was a counterfeit; strictly speaking, one who for fraudulent 
purposes assumed a disguise. The potvoalloper then, may have been 
originally the potwalapa (pot counterfeit) ; and potnvalapa may have 
gradually passed into our vernacular potivalloper (pot boiler). 



ANACHARSIS CLOOTZ. 

This name was assumed by Baron Jean Baptiste Clootz, who was 
born at Cleeves in 1755. He conceived the idea of reforming the 
human race, and travelled through England, Germany, Italy, &c, de- 
nouncing all kings, princes, and rulers, and even the Deity himself. He 
called himself Anacharsis, in allusion to the Scythian philosopher of this 
name, who flourished about six centuries before the Christian era, and 
who travelled to Greece and other countries for the purpose of gaining 
knowledge, in order to improve the people of his own country (Wheeler's 
Dictionary). Among his classic freaks, Anacharsis Clootz got up at 
Paris, in 1793, a sort of national pageant or procession, in which Eng- 
land was personified by Captain Skinner, as a man of elegant manners. 



MRS. PARTINGTON AND HER MOP. 

This "labour in vain" will be found illustrated in the following 
passage from the Rev. Sydney Smith's speech at Taunton on the rejec- 
tion of the Reform Bill, October, 1831 : 

" The attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds 
me very forcibly of the great storm off Sidmouth, and the conduct of the 
excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, 
there set in a great flood upon that town ; the tide rose to an incredible 
height, the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threat- 
ened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, 
Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of 
her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the 
sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The At- 
lantic was roused ; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up ; but I need nottell 



SIGNING THE TREATY OF UTRECHT. 257 

you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic beat Mrs. Partington. 
She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled 
with a tempest." 

The Americans, however, lay claim to the first use of the Partington 
and Mop image ; she has latterly become a very popular personage in the 
States, and the American humorist, B. P. Shillabeer, has collected and 
recorded the old lady's laughable sayings. 



KING BOMBA. 

This was the sobriquet given to Ferdinand II., King of the Two Sicilies. 
Bomb a is the name of a children's game in Italy, resembling our " prisoners' 
base," and as Ferdinand was fond of childish amusements, playing at 
soldiers, &c, the nickname is traced to this pastime. But, a more rea- 
sonable cause is the charge against Ferdinand of his having called upon his 
soldiers to " bombard " his people during one of their insurrections. 
This is denied ; but the book, Naples and King Ferdinand, repeats the 
charge, adding that the King kept crying out, " Down with them ! 
down with them ! " though it is added, in a note, that the particular ex- 
pression was " Bombardare ;" " hence," says the author, " arose his well- 
known sobriquet of Bomba." — {Leigh Hunt.) The Dublin Evening Ga- 
zette controverts this interpretation, saying that in Italy, " when you 
tell a man a thing which he knows to be false, or when he wishes to 
convey to you the idea of the utter worthlessness of any thing or person, 
he puffs out his cheek like a bagpiper's in full blow, smites it with his 
forefinger, and allows the pent breath to explode, with the exclama- 
tion, ' Bomba P I have witnessed the gesture and heard the sound. 
Hence, after 1849, when royal oaths in the name of the Most Holy 
Trinity were found to be as worthless as a beggar's in the name of 
Bacchus, or the Madonna, when Ferdinand was perceived to be a worth- 
less liar, his quickwitted people whispered his name. He was called 
King Bomba, King Puffcheek, King Liar, King Knave. The name and 
his character were then so much in harmony, that it spread widely. 
Longfellow sings : 

After Palermo's fatal siege, 

Across the western seas he fled, 

In good King Bomba's happy reign. 

— Wheeler's Dictionary of the Noted Names of Fiction, 1866. 



SIGNING THE TREATY OF UTRECHT. 

The treaties were signed between England and France at two o'clock 
in the afternoon ; the Ministers of the Duke of Savoy, and the King of 
Prussia, in the course of the same evening, set their hands and seals to 
the parchment ; and the Dutch characteristically came in last, signing 
at midnight. Prior had had the distinction of bringing over the treaty 
of Ryswick to England. The honour of bringing over the Treaty of 
Utrecht was reserved to Bolingbroke's young brother George, who 

s 



258 SMALL MAJORITIES. 

arrived in London with the precious document about two o'clock in the 
afternoon of Good Friday, the 3rd of April. The Secretary welcomed 
his brother with open arms, as, covered with dust, he alighted from his 
post-chaise at Whitehall. All Bolingbroke's cares seemed at an end. 
He could scarcely believe in the reality of the great treaty that he so 
eagerly glanced over. The words which came from the mouth of Eliza- 
beth when the news came to Hatfield that her sister Mary was dead, and 
that she, the persecuted princess, was now the Queen of England, came 
to Bolingbroke's mind: " It is the Lord's work, and it is marvellous in 
our eyes." — Macknight's Life of Lord Bolingbroke. 

Peace with France might have been concluded with Great Britain on 
infinitely better terms two years before the Treaty of Utrecht ; but the 
negotiations were broken off principally on account of an assiento made 
with the French Guinea Company, who were to furnish to the English 
4800 negroes annually : this Great Britain most pertinaciously insisted 
on, and Louis XIV. most reluctantly conceded, although he gained po- 
litical objects of great magnitude. Several bloody battles, and still more 
bloody sieges, took place, and much treasure was expended ; but the 
English nation persisted in engrossing this now reprobated privilege, 
which, although nominally limited to 4 800 negroes, furnished a pretext 
for smuggling in three times that number. On such matters national 
feelings seem periodically subject to hot and cold fits. — Notes to assist 
the Memory. Second Edition, 1827. 



HOW THE HABEAS CORPUS ACT WAS OBTAINED. 

Bishop Burnet relates a circumstance respecting the Habeas Corpus 
Act which is more curious than creditable ; and though we cannot be 
induced to suppose that this important statute was obtained by a jest 
and a fraud, yet the story proves that a very formidable opposition was 
made to it at the time. " It was carried " (says he) " by an odd arti- 
fice in the House of Lords. Lord Grey and Lord Norris were named 
to be the tellers ; Lord Norris, being a man subject to vapours, was not 
at all times attentive to what he was doing, so a very fat lord coming in, 
Lord Grey counted him for ten, as a jest at first, but seeing that Lord 
Norris had not observed it, he went on with his misreckoning often : so 
it was reported to the House, and declared, that they who were for the 
Bill were the majority, though it indeed went on the other side ; and 
by this, means the Bill passed." — Hist. Car. II. 485 ; Christian's Black- 
stone. See, also, ante, p. 66. 



SMALL MAJORITIES. 

Some of the most eventful changes in our constitution have been 
carried by feeble majorities. The great points of the national religion, 
under Elizabeth, were carried by six votes. The great question on the 
danger of Popery, in Queen Anne's reign, was decided by a majority of 
256 to 208. The Hanover succession was carried by a single vote ! 



« caucus:* 259 



The Remonstrance, in Charles I.'s time, by eleven. The Union with 
Scotland and Ireland by very small majorities. The Reform in Parlia- 
ment in 1831, by one! — Duncan's Essays.* 



FREE-SPEAKING. 
Archbishop Whately, in his very able Lecture on Egypt, referring to 
the writers on Public Affairs at home, reprehends " the practice of exag- 
geration, with keen delight, every evil that they can find, inventing such 
as do not exist, and keeping out of sight what is good. An Eastern 
despot, reading the productions of one of these writers, would say that, 
with all our precautions, we are the worst governed p:ople on earth ; 
and that our law courts and public offices are merely a complicated ma- 
chinery for oppressing the mass of the people ; that our Houses of Lords 
and Commons are utterly mismanaged, our public men striving to re- 
press merit, and that our best plan would be to sweep away all those, as, 
with less trouble, matters might go on better, and could not go on worse. 
Charges of this nature cannot be brought publicly forward in the 
Turkish Empire. In Cairo, a man was beheaded because he made too 
free a use of his tongue. He was told not to be speaking of the insur- 
rection in Syria, and had dared to be chatting of the news ; and there 
are other countries also, where because such charges are true, it would 
not be safe to circulate them. But these writers do not mean half what 
they set forth. They heighten their descriptions to display their elo- 
quence; but the tendency of such publications is always towards revo- 
lution, and the practical effect on the minds of the people is to render 
them incredulous. They understand that these overwrought represen- 
tations are for effect, and they go about their business with an impres- 
sion that the whole is unreal. If one of these writers were visited him- 
self with a horrible dream that he was a peasant under an Oriental des- 
pot, that he was taxed at the will of the Sovereign, and had to pay the 
assessment in produce valued at half the market-price, that he was com- 
pelled to work and receive four-fifths of his low wages in food, consisting 
of hard, sour biscuit — let him then dream that he had spoken against the 
Ministry, and that he finds himself bastinadoed till he confesses that he 
brought false charges ; that his grown-up son had been dragged off for 
a soldier, and himself deprived of his only support, and he would be in- 
clined to doubt whether ours is the worst system of government." 

" CAUCUS/' 
The term Caucus is applied to all party meetings held in secret in the 
United States. It is a corruption of the word caulkers; the disguistd 
patriots of Massachusetts, in 1776, having been so called because they 
met in the ship-yards. The phrase in question has been applied to the 
political meetings held at the private residences of statesmen ; whicii 
is conceived to be a singular perversion of its use and meaning. Such 



* See "Great Events from Little Causes," ante, p. 66, 
S 2 



260 THE CAVE ADULLAM. 

gatherings, or receptions, are neither cabals nor secret conclaves ; on the 
contrary, the reporters of several newspapers, without regard to their 
political aims, are admitted ; and the whole proceedings are as freely 
made known to the outside public as the debates in Parliament. Caucus 
is by no means a pretty, much less a desirable word, to be added to our 
national vocabulary ; but, if it be adopted at all, let us at least make a 
right use of it. — Notes and Queries. 



THE CAVE ADULLAM. 

This opprobrious appellation, which has been applied to the political 
malcontent in our times, is of Scriptural origin. The Cave Adullam is 
first mentioned in i Samuel xxii. i, 2. David, when he was fleeing 
from Saul, went over to Gath, in Philistia ; but finding that he was not 
safe there, he fled to the Cave Adullam. And it is recorded, that there, 
"" every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and 
every one that <was discontented, gathered themselves unto him, and he 
became captain over them." The point, the appropriateness, and the 
sting of the analogy between the old Adullamites and the new, lies in the 
words in Italics. 

In David's company there were, one can imagine, many young men 
who felt that they had been neglected in the Court of Saul ; and in our 
time, 1866, it was said, or shrewdly thought, that there were many 
persons who were distressed and discontented, because when Earl 
Russell formed his Government, they were neglected and passed by. 
But perhaps there is a more subtle analogy. David and his friends were 
outcasts, and two courses were before them. They could go over to 
the Philistines, but this course was repugnant to them, and so they de- 
termined to have an independent party. And, as with the old, so with 
the new Adullamites. They, too, might go over to the Philistines, but 
were not prepared for so extreme a policy ; and they, too, determined 
to set up for themselves. 

Mr. Bright, in the House of Commons, applied Adullamites to the 
above party ; but, according to a statement in a work entitled Six Months 
in the White House with Abraham Lincoln, by Mr. Carpenter, an artist, 
who remained in the White House while painting an historical picture 
of the President reading his Proclamation of Emancipation to his Cabinet, 
it would seem that Mr. Bright's " Adullam " illustration was origi- 
nally used by Mr. Lincoln. When the dissatisfied anti-slavery men 
nominated Mr. Fremont for the Presidency, and a number of others 
who had personal reasons for opposing the re-nomination of Mr. Lincoln, 
the late President, in the course of a conversation with Colonel Deming, 
turned over the leaves of a Bible, which had just been given him by the 
negroes of Baltimore, and read, in his peculiar, slow, waggish tone, 
" And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, 
and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and 
he became a captain over them ; and there were with him about tour hun- 
dred men." 



"MEASURES, NOT MEN." 261 



FOLLOWING AND LEADING. 

Mr. Buckle, in his thoughtful History of Civilization, remarks: "In 
the present state of knowledge, Politics, so far from being a science, is 
one of the most backward of all the arts ; and the only safe course for 
the legislator is to look upon his craft as consisting in the adaptation of 
temporary contrivances to temporary emergencies. His business is to 
follow the age, and not at all to attempt to lead it. He should be satisfied 
with studying what is passing around him, and should modify his 
schemes, not according to the notions he has inherited from his fathers, 
but according to the actual exigencies of his own time. For he may 
rely upon it that the movements of society have now become so rapid 
that the wants of one generation are no measure of the wants of another ; 
and that men, urged by a sense of their own progress, are growing weaiy 
of idle talk about the wisdom of their ancestors, and are fast discarding 
those trite and sleepy maxims which have hitherto imposed upon them, 
but by which they will not consent to be much longer troubled." 



LEGITIMACY AND GOVERNMENT. 

It is an unguarded idea of some public writers that " the Sovereign 
holds her crown not by hereditary descent, but by the will of the 
nation." This doctrine is too frequently stated in and out of Parliament ; 
and without qualification or explanation it would be apt to breed mis- 
chief in the minds of an ignorant and excited multitude, if the instinctive 
feelings of common sense did not invariably correct the popular errors 
of theorists. 

"They who have studied the Constitution attentively hold that her 
Majesty reigns by hereditary right, though her predecessor in 1688 re- 
ceived the Crown at the hands of a free nation. To refer to the right 
or election, which can be exercised only during a revolution, and to be 
silent on hereditary right, is to lower the Regal dignity to the precarious 
office of the judges when they held their patents durante bene placito. 
Suppose a nation so divided that one casting vote would carry a plebis- 
cite, changing the form of government, or the dynasty, and there would 
be a practical illustration of a principle— if principle at all — which, when 
taken as a broad palpable fact, is undeniable in the founder of a dynasty, 
but when erected into a legal theory, it becomes neither more nor less 
than a permanent code of revolution. Hence the successor of that 
founder, if his power be not supported by military despotism, is invariably 
a staunch advocate of his indefeasible hereditary right, though originally 
derived from the consent of the nation." — Saturday Review. 



" MEASURES, NOT MEN." 
Canning denounced what he calls the idle cant of " Measures, not 
men ;" the belief that " it is the harness, not the horses, which draw the 



262 ORIGIN OF CROSS-READINGS. 

cnariot along ;" and he affirmed, that to contend with Bonaparte, one 
great commanding spirit was worth all our preparations. Upon this 
Sir H. Bulwer says : — " Mr. Canning was right. No cant betrays more 
ignorance than that which affects to undervalue the qualities of public 
men in the march of public affairs. However circumstances may con- 
tribute to make individuals, individuals have as great a share in making 
circumstances. Had Queen Elizabeth been a weak and timid woman, 
we might now be speaking Spanish, and have our fates dependent on the 
struggle between Prim and Narvaez. Had James II. been a wise and 
prudent man, instead of the present cry against Irish Catholics, our 
saints of the day would have been spreading charges against the violence 
and perfidy of some Puritan Protestant ; some English, or perhaps 
Scotch, O'Connell. Strip Mirabeau of his eloquence, endow Louis XVI. 
with the courage and the genius of Henry IV., and the history of the 
last eighty years might be obliterated." 



A SUFFERER BY REVOLUTIONS. 

A great sufferer by revolutions was King Louis of Bavaria, who 
abdicated after an insurrection in 1848, and died in 1868. He had 
seen his family extensively affected by the dynastic changes which had 
taken place since 1859. His second son is Otho, the ex-King of Greece, 
born on the 1st of June, 1815 ; his third, Luitpold, is married to the 
daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; one of his daughters to the 
Duke of Modena; and one of his grandsons, or his youngest son 
Adalbert, was to have succeeded Otho on the throne of Greece. 
Lastly, the Queen of Naples and her sister, the Countess de Trani, 
belong to a collateral branch of the Royal family, that of Maximilian, 
Duke of Bavaria. The House of Wittelsbach has therefore suffered 
most materially from the revolutions of Germany, Italy, and Greece, 
and its members might give a second representation of the famous 
dinner at Venice mentioned in Voltaire's Candide. — Le Temps. 



ORIGIN OF CROSS-READINGS IN NEWSPAPERS. 

These amusing trifles are about a century old. Walpole writes, at 
the close of 1766, to George Montagu: " Apropos, have you seen that 
delightful paper composed out of scraps in the newspaper ? I laughed 
till I cried, and literally burst out so loud that I thought Favre, who 
was waiting in the next room, would conclude I was in a fit. It is 
the newest piece of humour, except the Bath Guide, that I have 
seen of many years." It was entitled Cross Readings, or " A New 
Method of reading the Newspapers," by Caleb Whitefoord, " Papyrius 
Cursor," a signature which Dr. Johnson thought singularly happy, as 
the real name of an ancient Roman. 

Walpole refers to it in 1789, as follows: "Mr. Fox, I am told, is 



POLITICAL NICKNAMES. 263 

better, but I have seen nobody that is particularly informed, though my 
house is well situated as a coffee-house, and I very seldom stir from the 
bar in the morning. I have no intelligence but from those who acci- 
dentally drop in, consequently my Gazette is commonly striped of two 
colours, as opposite as black and white, and, if repeated, would sound 
like the cross readings from newspapers. Truth is said to lie at the 
bottom of a well, to which I am sure at present there are two buckets, 
which clash so much that each brings up as much mud as pure grain. 
If I do not sift them, at least I do not retail one for the other." 

Walpole has here misquoted. Cleanthes, the stoic, said that " truth 
was hid in a pit." " Yes," was the reply, "but you Greek philoso- 
phers were the first that put her there, and then claimed so much merit 
to yourselves in drawing her out." 



POLITICAL NICKNAMES. 

Political nicknames were the light artillery of Cobbett, in his Register, 
perhaps never more felicitously applied than by this sarcastic politician' 
in the memorable instance, when, in 1825, the Right Hon. F. J. 
Robinson, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, boasted in Parliament of an 
expanded circulation exceeding by nearly 50 per cent, the amount in 
1823. This was the era of "Prosperity Robinson" (afterwards first 
Earl of Ripon), who boasted of " dispensing the blessings of civilization 
from the portals of ancient monarchy." In the King's Speech of 1825, 
his Majesty said : " There never was a period in the history of the 
country when all the great interests of society were at the same time in 
so thriving a condition." But the sunshine was succeeded by the 
murkiest of gloom — "the Panic of 1825," when one-eighth of the 
country banks were ruined, and six of the London banks stopped pay- 
ment ; and the two years' increase in the circulating medium was 
annihilated in a few weeks. In contradistinction to Prosperity 
Robinson, Joseph Hume was called " Adversity Hume," owing to his 
constant presages of ruin and disaster to befal the people of Great Britain. 
Cobbett used to address Daniel O'Connell as Big O. 

When, in 182 r, Alderman Wood was reproached with having ill 
advised Queen Caroline, he diffidently admitted that his conduct might 
not be " Absolute Wisdom," by which distinction, for a considerable 
time, he was jocularly known. 

Finality John was the somewhat too familiar sobriquet applied to 
Lord John Russell, who involuntarily proved the true prophet of the 
fate of his own measure : he it was who declared the finality of the 
Reform Bill ; and when, in 186], his lordship proposed to amend the 
law, the country took Lord John at his word, and by their indifference, 
pronounced the Reform Act to be final. Sydney Smith oddly said, 
that when Lord John visited the West of England after one of his 
political defeats on the Reform Bill, the country-people thought him 
or very small stature, which Sydney humorously attributed to these 
mortifications. 



264 WASTE OF LIFE. 

In December, 1834, a small party in the House of Commons was 
nicknamed by O'Connell as the Derby Dilly, " carrying six insides," the 
leader of whom was Lord Stanley, now Earl of Derby. 

Lady Hester Stanhope tells us that Lord Chatham's first coachman 
being taken ill, the postillion was sent into the town for the family 
doctor ; but he being from home the messenger brought with him Mr. 
Addington, who, by consent of Lord Chatham, attended the coach- 
man. His lordship was so pleased with Mr. A. that he took him as 
apothecary for the servants, then for himself ; and finding he spoke good 
sense on medicine, then on politics, he at last made him his physician. 
Dr. Addington, after practising in London for some time with distinc- 
tion, retired to Reading, and there married ; and in 1757, was born 
their eldest son, Henry Addington, afterwards Viscount Sidmouth. 
Hence his lordship's political sobriquet of " the Doctor ;" and in George 
Cruikshank's clever woodcut caricatures of the unpopular minister, 
made familiar to thousands of readers, illustrating the political squibs of 
William Hone, "the Doctor" invariably carries his professional insignia 
of the clyster bag and pipe. Little, it has been observed, did Walpole 
or anybody else foresee that the son of the empiric (Dr. Addington) 
should, within a few years after Walpole's death, be Prime Minister of 
England, and that his cant appellation (from his father's profession) 
would be that of " the Doctor !" 



WASTE OF LIFE. 

How cheaply life was held in former ages is shown in the records of 
the Lancaster and York feuds — a thorough family quarrel in its bitter- 
ness, its endurance, and its recklessness — in which relatives were killed by 
relatives after every battle. No regard was had to kinsman ship when the 
next-of-kin stood a captive adversary before the victor in the fight : the 
conquering Prince sent his chained cousins to the block, by dozens. 
The Plantagenets had no scruples about murdering their nearest con- 
nexions when these lay in their way and impeded their advance. 

With later times came improved ideas. Henry VII. felt himself 
bound to find a reason for the killing of young Warwick, whose claims 
to the crown excited in him fear and disgust ; but when Lady Arabella 
Stuart was in the hands of James, who had similar fears and feelings 
with regard to that descendant of the daughter of Henry VII., he only 
locked her up. But he did not escape imputation of poisoning her 
when she died : so recent were the times, or so fresh the memory of 
them, when such deeds were done on heirs presumptive. So, at a later 
period, James II. killed his nephew, Monmouth, after admitting him to 
an audience, which was tantamount to pardon, for the King's shadow 
casts grace where it falls ; but the law, at all events, justified James. * * * 

There are examples abroad where reigning sovereigns have killed their 
own sons. The Czar Peter would stand very uneasily at the Old 
Bailey if he could be tried there with respect to that little affair of his 
DO y Alexis. Others, again, have for the mere luxury of the thing 



THE MONEY-COST OF WAR. 265 

seized an unsuspecting prince, accused him of being a pretender, and 
murdered him right out, as Napoleon I. did in the person of the Due 
d'Enghien, for whose bloody disposing-of he found so ready a Tyrrell, 
a Deighton, and a Forrest. Yet observe how ideas changed within a 
few years. The nephew of the same Napoleon invaded the kingdom of 
Louis- Philippe twice. The old king pardoned the first attempt, and 
placed the offender under mild restraint for the second ; and by giving 
him life, afforded him his last and successfully-used opportunity to 
mount the throne and confiscate his predecessor's family property. It 
was to obviate such possible consequences that kings of old followed 
more rigorous courses, and found ready absolution if they only accom- 
plished the course thoroughly. — Abridged from the Aihenaum. 



THE MONEY- COST OF WAR. 

The standing armies of Europe amount to about six millions of men. 
What is it that this simple statement really means ? Setting aside the 
agonies of maiming and of death, the tears of forlorn women, the 
desolation of households, and the hideous passions which wake up upon 
the battle-field, what is the actual material loss to humanity which is 
involved in the fact that six millions of men devote their lives to the 
business of war ? It means that something very like the whole adult 
male population of Great Britain are withdrawn from the production of 
the materials of comfort and enjoyment, and make it the work of their 
lives not merely to cease from the production of what is essential to the 
well-being of their fellow-creatures, but to train themselves to inflict 
the utmost possible destruction of everything that may stand in the way 
of conquest. 

At a moderate calculation, it may be said that war costs Europe 
about 500 millions sterling every year, by the mere withdrawing of 
heads and hands from the daily work by which the necessities and 
comforts of life are supplied. That is to say, a sum much exceeding 
half the national debt of Great Britain is annually thrown away in the 
form of the food, clothes, habitations, and luxuries which would other- 
wise have been created for the benefit of the world. The income tax 
for Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1865 produced about eight 
millions sterling. By more than sixty times that amount was Europe 
impoverished during the same year in order that a countless multitude 
of men might do nothing but prepare for the cutting each other's 
throats with the utmost practicable rapidity and on the largest possible 
scale. Further still, there is not only the loss which is the consequence 
of enforced idleness, but there is the actual annual expenditure upon 
each army and navy to be taken into account. Our own army and 
navy cost us about twenty-five millions sterling every year, exclusive of 
additional expenditure on such occasional trifles as the fortifications of 
Portsmouth and the Ise of Wight. 

The destruction of the produce of human labour in the conflicts of 
actual war is tremendous. What are Virginia and South Carolina at 



166 ABSOLUTE MONARCHY OF DENMARK. 

this hour ? What was England after the Wars of the Roses ? What 
was half Europe at the end of the wars that were finally terminated at 
Waterloo ? " Man marks the earth with ruin," sang Lord Byron, and 
he said few things so simply true and terrible. So that it is only with 
a very large qualification that it can be urged that our annual expendi- 
ture of twenty-five millions for fighting purposes is not a positive 
pauperizing of the nation to that same amount. 

It is well now and then to remind ourselves that Europe annually 
throws away the power of producing as much as would support fifteen 
millions of families in the condition of the well-paid portion of the 
English peasantry. That wars will ever be brought to an end by such 
calculations can be expected by none but the blindest devotees to the 
pounds, shillings, and pence theory of human nature. It is, however, 
desirable every now and then to look over the balance-sheet of profit 
and loss, and see what we are doing with our money. Twenty-five 
millions spent yearly upon our army and navy means 20s. a week for 
about 500,000 families. Yet we dare not dismiss our soldiers and 
sailors to peaceful toils, because Europe has six millions of men under 
arms. — Abridged from the Pall-mall Gazette, 



ABSOLUTE MONARCHY OF DENMARK. 

Lord Molesworth, who resided, in 1660, as envoy of the King of 
England at the Court of Copenhagen, relates that in the above year 
the three States of Denmark, that is the Nobility, Clergy, and Com- 
monalty being assembled in order to pay and disband the troops 
which had been employed against Sweden, the Nobility endeavoured to 
lay the whole burden on the Commons ; while the latter, who had 
defended their country, their prince, and the nobility themselves, with 
the utmost bravery, insisted that the nobles, who enjoyed all the lands, 
should pay their share of the taxes, since they suffered less in the 
common calamity, and had done less to prevent its progress. 

The Commons were then officially informed that they were slaves to 
the nobility, but the word slaves not being relished by the clergy and 
burghers, they, on consultation, determined, as the most effectual way 
to bring the nobility to their senses, and to remedy the disorders of the 
state, " to add to the power of the King, and render his crown here- 
ditary." The nobles were in a general state of consternation at the 
suddenness of this proposal, but the two other states — the clergy and 
commons— were not to be wrought upon by smooth speeches, explana- 
tions, and appeals for time and delay. The bishop made a long speech 
in praise of his Majesty, and concluded with offering him an hereditary 
and absolute dominion. The King returned them his thanks; but 
observed that the concurrence of the nobles was necessary. The 
nobles, " filled with the apprehensions of being all massacred," were 
now in a great hurry to confirm the decision of the two other states ; 
but the King would not allow of such cowardly precipitation, and con- 
sequently, with all the formalities, on the 27th of October, 1660, "the 



INVASION PANICS OF 1847-8 AND i8$i. 267 

homage of all the senators, nobility, clergy, and commons was received 
by the King; this was " performed on their knees, each taking an oath 
faithfully to promote his Majesty's interests in all things, and to serve 
him faithfully, as became hereditary subjects." One Gersdorff, a prin- 
cipal senator, expressed a wish that his Majesty's successors might 
" follow the example his Majesty would undoubtedly set them, and 
make use of that unlimited power for the good, and not the prejudice 
of his subjects." "The nobles," continues M oles worth, " were called 
over by name, and ordered to subscribe the oath they had taken, which 
they all did. Thus, in four days' time, the Kingdom of Denmark was 
changed from a state, but little different from that of aristocracy, to 
that of an unlimited monarchy, and the kettle-drums and trumpets 
which are ranged before the palace, proclaim aloud the very minute 
when the King sits down to table." 

" What is most admirable with respect to Denmark are its laws, 
which are founded on equity, and are remarkable for their justice, per- 
spicuity, and brevity. These are contained in one quarto "volume, wrote 
in the language of the country, with such plainness that every man who 
can read is capable of understanding his own case, and pleading it too, 
if he pleases, without the assistance of either an attorney or of counsel." 
— T. J. Buckton, Notes and Queries, 3rd S., No. 114. 



INVASION PANICS OF 1847-8 AND 1 85 1. 

The first of these Panics originated in the publication of a letter ad- 
dressed to Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector- General of Fortifications, by 
the Duke of Wellington, who exposed the defenceless state of the 
country, which thus produced a great sensation, and no doubt enabled the 
Executive to stay the progress of dangerous retrenchments in the naval 
and military services, and eventually to obtain power to raise a new 
Militia. 

Upon this famous letter Mr. Cobden, in a pamphlet published by him 
in 1862, states the public had never been fully informed of the circum- 
stances which led to its publication, and which he thus proceeds to nar- 
rate: 

" In a pamphlet which appeared in France, just previous to the open- 
ing of the session of 1848, written by M. Chevalier, who had already 
devoted his accomplished pen to the cause of the Anglo-French alliance, 
the Duke's letter had been treated in the character of an answer to Prince 
Joinville's publication. This drew from Lord John Russell an explana- 
tion in the House, on the authority of the Duke himself, in which he 
said that, ' nothing could have given greater pain,' to the writer, ' than 
the publication of sentiments which he had expressed confidentially to 
a brother officer.' It was stated by Lord Palmerston, at a subsequent 
date, that the letter was written ' in consequence of an able memorandum 
drawn up by Sir John Burgoyne.' Whoever gave it to the world must 
have assumed that it would possess an authority above criticism ; other- 
wise, it contains passages which would have induced a friend to with- 



263 INVASION PANICS OF 1847-8 AND 1851. 

hold it from publication. The concluding sentence, where, in speaking 
of himself, he says, ' I am bordering upon seventy-seven years of age, 
passed in honour,' affords sufficient proof that it was not intended for 
the public eye. The entire production, indeed, gives painful evidence of 
enfeebled powers. One extract will be sufficient ; the italics are not in 
the original : ' I am accustomed to the consideration of these questions, 
and have examined and reconnoitred, over and over again, the whole 
coast from the North Foreland, by Dover, Folkestone, Beachy Head, 
Brighton, Arundel, to Selsey Bill, near Portsmouth ; and I say that, ex- 
cepting immediately under the fire of Dover Castle, there is not a spot 
on the coast on (which infantry might not be thrown on shore at any time 
of tide, with any <wind, and in any qveather, and from which such body 
of infantry so thrown on shore would not find within a distance of five 
miles a road into the interior of the country, through the cliffs, practi- 
cable for the march of a body of troops.' Now, any person who has 
been in the habit of visiting Eastbourne and Hastings, knows that for 
half the year no prudent mariner brings his vessel within several miles of 
that coast, and that there is a considerable extent of shore where a land- 
ing is at all times impracticable. It may be safely affirmed, that if any 
one but the Duke of Wellington had stated that there was any shore in 
the world, on which a body of troops could be landed ' at any time of 
the tide, with any wind, and in any weather,' the statement would have 
been deemed undeserving of notice. The assertion, however, passed 
unchallenged at the time, and the entire letter was quoted as an unan- 
swerable proof that the country was in danger. To have ventured on 
criticism or doubt would have only invited the accusation of want of 
patriotism." 

The Panic of 1851 led to the introduction of a Militia Bill, under 
the administration of Lord Derby, although the bill was in substance 
the measure of Lord Palmerston, who advocated it much more boldly 
than the Government. Mr. Cobden, however, says of it : — " Falling back 
on his own idea of steam navigation having given an advantage to our 
neighbour, or, to use his favourite phrase, having 'thrown a bridge 
across the Channel,' Lord Palmerston now insisted on the practica- 
bility of 50,000 or 60,000 men being transported, without notice, from 
Cherbourg to our shores in a single night. Such a declaration had not 
been before heard from one holding high rank in that House. It over- 
leapt all reliance on our diplomacy or our fleets ; and, strange enough 
in one who had offered such eager congratulations to the author of the 
coup-d'etat, the assumption of such a danger as this implied that our 
neighbour was little better than a buccaneer. But this hypothesis of 
sudden invasion, is absolutely indispensable for affording the alarmists 
any standing ground whatever. Take away the liability to surprise, by 
admitting the necessity of a previous ground of quarrel, and the delays 
of a diplomatic correspondence, and you have time to collect your fleet 
and drill an army." 

Indeed, Lord Palmerston went so far as to say: "The very ship 
despatched to convey to this country intelligence of the threatened ar- 



SEEKING A PLACE. 269 



mament would probably not reach our shores much sooner than the 
hostile expedition." 

Mr. Cobden, on the other hand, maintained that time could be in- 
sured to drill an army to receive the invaders ; and quoted a corrobo- 
rative remark from Lord Hardinge. " Give me," said the Commander- 
in-Chief before the Sebastopol Committee, " a good stout man ; and let 
us have him for sixty days to train him, and he will be as good a soldier 
as you can have." 



SEEKING A PLACE. 

Grund, in his sketches of American Aristocracy, relates: One morning, 
scarcely a fortnight after General Jackson's arrival at the White House, 
a shabby-genteel looking man presented himself at his parlour, and after 
the usual salutation of shaking hands, expressed his joy at seeing the vene- 
rable old gentleman at last hold the situation of Chief Magistrate of the 
country, to which his bravery, his talents, and his unimpeachable recti- 
tude fully entitled him. " We have had a hard time of it," said he, " in 
our little place ; but our exertions were unremitting ; I myself went 
round to stimulate my neighbours, and at last the victory was ours. 
We beat them by a majority of ten votes, and I now behold the result 
of this glorious triumph." The General thanked him in terms of studied 
politeness, assuring him that he would resign his office in an instant if 
he did not think his election gave satisfaction to a vast majority of the 
people ; and at least regretted that his admirer's zeal for the public 
weal should have been so severely taxed on his account. " Oh ! no 
matter for that, sir," said he, " I did it with pleasure, I did it for myself 
and for my country " (the General bowed) ; " and I now come to con- 
gratulate you on your success " (the General bowed again). " I thought, 
sir," continued he, " that as you are now President of the United States, 
I might be useful to you in some official capacity." (The General looked 
somewhat embarrassed). "Pray, sir, have you already made choice of 
your cabinet ministers?" "I have," was the reply of the General. "Well, 
no matter for that, I shall be satisfied with an embassy to Europe." — " I 
am sorry to say there is no vacancy." — " Then you will, perhaps, re- 
quire a head clerk in the department of state?" — " These are generally 
appointed by the respective secretaries." — "I am very sorry for that: 
then I must be satisfied with some inferior appointment." — " I never in- 
terfere with these, you must address yourself to the heads of depart- 
ments." — ■" But, could I not be the postmaster in Washington ? Only 
think, General, how I worked for you!" — " I am much obliged to you 
for the good opinion you entertain of me, and for your kind offices at 
the last election ; but the postmaster for the city of Washington is al- 
ready appointed." — " Well, I don't particularly care for that ; I should 
be satisfied with being his clerk." — " This is a subject you must mention 
to the postmaster." — " Why, then, General," exclaimed the disappointed 
candidate for offices, " haven t you got an old black coatf You may weil 
imagine that the General gave him one. 



27 THE MODERN GREEKS. 



THE MODERN GREEKS. 

Public opinion in England has altered its estimate of the Greek people 
several times during the last sixty years. In the early part of the century 
we were too busily engaged in wrestling with Bonaparte to inquire 
whether the Moslem was justified in enslaving the Christian. The only 
question we asked was, " Are you for the French, or for us ?" When 
the Turks sided against the French we supported them ; when they 
sided with the French, we attacked them. In those days Englishmen 
visited Greece in two characters only. They went either as traders or 
antiquaries. As traders they merely touched at the maritime towns, 
and limited their inquiries to the state of the currant crop ; as anti- 
quaries, they went about measuring temples and theatres, and, as has 
been justly observed, "pror.oanced the people vile and base if every 
unfortunate peasant and every ignorant priest did not exhibit the valour 
of a Brasidas and the wisdom of a Solon." In fact, the sympathies of 
these enthusiasts too often stopped short at the date of the battle or 
Chgeronea ; they regarded the subsequent twenty centuries as an unin- 
teresting record of Macedonian, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and 
Ottoman subjugation. But a change was at hand. The Greeks had 
always fretted under their slavery, had always cherished the intention of 
recovering their ancient independence, and the time had arrived for 
striking a decisive blow. For more than a century the political powei 
of the Turks had been gradually waning, and, in addition to this, while 
the Greeks had advanced together with the rest of Europe in com- 
mercial enterprise and general cultivation, their masters remained 
immersed in their original barbarism. 

In 1 82 1, the Greek Revolution began, and immediately all the ardent 
youth of England became philo-Hellenes. Hundreds of men and 
women are yet among us who can remember how their hearts vibrated 
with triumphant joy or indignant sorrow as successive items of news 
arrived from the seat of revolt. Nor were their sympathies confined to 
words only. Money was liberally subscribed, and numerous volunteers 
flocked to the scene of action, who atoned by their enthusiasm for their 
lack of military skill. The most famous poet of the day was numbered 
among the crusading band, but, though death speedily put an end to 
his new career, he did not die until his preconceived ideas of Hellenic 
patriotism had received a rude disenchantment. "Of the Greeks," he 
wrote mournfully, " I can't say much good hitherto, and I do not like 
to speak ill of them, though they do of one another." The truth was 
that the crusaders had pitched their expectations too high. They 
fancied that a people who had been enslaved for 2000 years would 
suddenly display the military skill of Miltiades and the virtue of Arsitides. 
In place of this they found that the insurgent chiefs were principally 
occupied in schemes of personal aggrandizement, and that patriotism of 
an enlarged type was almost unknown to them. Petro Bey plainly told 
Lord Byron that the true way to save Greece was to lend him (the 
Bey) a thousand pounds. Moreover, the war was conducted on both 



" SIGHTS THA T I HAVE SEEN." 271 

sides with the utmost savagery. While the Turks massacred their 
thousands in Cyprus and Chios, the Greeks retaliated at the capture of 
Athens by butchering every Moslem woman and child who was not 
rescued by French intervention. 

But, besides these grander crimes, the Greeks were found to be 
financially dishonest. They borrowed money from the confiding 
English, squandered and jobbed it away, and paid neither principal nor 
interest. They set up Capo d'Istrias, one of their purest patriots, as 
President, and presently assassinated him. At last they obtained a 
young German Prince — Otho of Bavaria — and made him King in 
1833. For some time after this we troubled ourselves but little about 
the Greeks until 1850, when Admiral Parker blockaded the Piraeus, 
ostensibly to enforce the claims of the redoubtable Don Pacifico, but in 
reality to check the intrigres of Russia. The Crimean War followed, 
during which Greek sympathies were naturally still more strongly enlisted 
in favour of their co-religionists. At last came another revolution. The 
Greeks grew weary of their Bavarian ruler, and bade him depart. Com- 
pared with the first revolution, however, the second was as the report 
of a popgun to the thunder of a 68-pounder. It might almost be said 
to have been made in rose-water, and, as such, was an encouraging proof 
of the calming effect of thirty years' independence. There were no 
terrible wrongs to redress, no irreconcilable foes to exterminate ; there 
was simply a good deal of discontent, more or less well-founded, and 
the Greek nation determined to solve the difficulty by sending poor 
Otho back to Bavaria. 

We believe that at the present time the Greeks are more justly esti- 
mated than at any former period. We no longer regard them as a race 
of resuscitated demigods, nor as a set of venal brigands and pirates. We 
no longer regard them as unadulterated descendants of the old Hellenic 
stock, nor as a tribe of ethnological impostors, masquerading under 
classical names. We think that, like the Greeks of old, they have their 
virtues and their failings ; and that, though undoubtedly commingled 
with other races, the genuine Greek type still remains predominant, 
just as an Englishman is still an Englishman, though Celtic and Norman 
blood flow in his veins with the original Anglo-Saxon. — Times journal. 

To this unsparing expose we may add Byron's memorable lines on 
the decadence of this famous nation of antiquity : — 

'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace, 
Each step from splendour to disgrace. 



"SIGHTS THAT I HAVE SEEN."" 

The Rev. Mr. Dutens, in 18 11, published a work with the above title, 
whence the following are extracts : 

" I have seen a King imprisoned by his son ;* five Emperors mas- 



Victor, King of Sardinia, in 1782. 



272 "SIGHTS THAT I HAVE SEEN r 

sacred;* five Kings assassinated;! six Kings deposed \% five Republics 
annihilated ;§ a great kingdom effaced from the map of Europe. || I 
have seen England lose in eight years half North America, after possess- 
ing it for more than a century. I have seen her (verifying the senti- 
ment of an ancient, that the empire of the sea gives that of the land) 
take the Cape of Good Hope and the island of Ceylon from the Dutch ; 
Malta, Egypt, and several colonies, from the French. I have seen her 
dictate the law to the King of Denmark at Copenhagen, and carry her 
victorious arms into the most remote parts of the world. I have seen 
this same England, in 1780, resist the combined efforts of Europe, of 
America, and of the Northern powers, who formed an armed neutrality 
against her maritime dominions ; I have seen her, in the revolutionary 
war, often destitute of allies and alone, opposing the enormous power 
of France, of Italy, of Denmark, and of Russia.f I have seen the son 
of an English gentleman go out to India, as writer to a mercantile com- 
pany (but quitting this service when very young to embrace the mili- 
tary life), afterwards rising to the head of the army, dethrone a power- 
ful Prince in the East, place another on his throne, conquer a part of 
Hindostan, and raise the British dominions in that quarter to the pre- 
eminence it now enjoys.** 

" I have seen what has no example in history, a little Corsican gentle- 
man conquer Italy ; force the Emperor of Germany to make a disgraceful 
peace; ff take Malta in two days; Egypt in a month; return from 
thence, and place himself on the throne of the Bourbons, and all in less 
than four years (from May, 1796, to November, 1799). 

" I have seen him transport his army and artillery in the midst of 
winter over the most difficult pass of the Alps, and in a single battle %% 
decide at once the fate of Germany and of Italy. I have seen the same 
Corsican gentleman order the Pope to Paris, in 1804, to crown him 
Emperor of the French, and afterwards depose this same Pope, and de- 
prive him of the temporal possessions which his ancestors had enjoyed 
for more than 1000 years.§§ 

" I have seen him declare himself King of Italy. I have seen him 
braving a formidable league which was directed against him, march to 



* Peter III., John VI., Paul I., Emperors of Russia; Selim III. in July, 
1803, and Mustapha IV., Nov. 17, 1808, Emperors of Constantinople. 

t Joseph, King of Portugal; Louis XV., Louis XVI., and Louis XVII., 
Kings of France ; Gustavus III., King of Sweden, in 1792. 

% Stanislaus Poniatowski, King of Poland. The King of Sardinia, December 
io, 1798. Ferdinand IV., King of Naples ; Charles IV. ; Ferdinand VII., 
King of Spain, May, 1808 ; and Gustavus IV. 

§ Holland, Sweden, Venice, Genoa, and Lucca. 

|| The kingdom of Poland. 

T[ After the treaty of Luneville. 

** Lord Clive, from 1747 to 1767. 

t* The peace of Campo Formio, on the 17th of October, 1797 : preliminaries 
were signed April 17, 1797, at Leoben. 

XX At Marengo, on the 14th of June, 1800, after having passed the Great St. 
Bernard. 

§§ In December, 1809. 



MORGANA TIC MARRIA GES. 273 

Vienna, and even into Hungary, in six weeks ; give the law three times 
to the Emperor of Germany,* compel him to abdicate the Imperial 
crown of the Caesars, deprive him of a part of his dominions ; force the 
Emperor of Russia twice to retire,f and soon after oblige him to march 
to his assistance against the Emperor of Austria. 

" I have seen him destroy the power of the King of Prussia in fifteen 
days, and strike all Europe with dismay : I have seen him dethrone five 
Kings,:}; and create eight others ;§ annex Holland to France, || dictate 
to Spain as if it were one of his provinces, employ her forces as his own, 
and at last take possession of the whole kingdom. In short, I have 
seen him extend his dominion farther than that of Charlemagne, and 
find nothing could resist his ambition but the King of Great Britain ; 
sometimes alone against the whole host of European power, and some- 
times with the troops of the Continent in his pay." 

Had Mr. Dutens lived but a few years longer, how greatly might he 
have increased this long list ! He would have seen Great Britain, aided 
only by raw troops, drive the veterans of France before her armies, 
through the Peninsula, freeing Portugal and Spain, and carrying her 
victorious arms even into France itself. 



MORGANATIC MARRIAGES. 

Dr W. Bell has communicated to Notes and Queries, 3rd S., No. t 16, 
a paper, wherein he says: " For Morganatic, the best, in fact, the only 
solution is found in the derivation of the word. When in the arid 
deserts of Arabia the parched traveller is mocked by the optical de- 
lusions of running streams and green meadows ; these the Italians call 
Fata Morgana, the delusions of the Morgana. Something thus de- 
lusive is a Morganatic marriage. For though it involves no immorality, 
and has always the full sanction of the Church, it is, as regards the wife 
and children, an illusion and a make-believe. They do not enjoy the 
rights of the husband, if a sovereign prince, nor take his title ; and it is 
only among sovereign princes that the practice obtains, The children 
have only the rights of the mother, unless she is ebenburtig, or, as is ex- 
pressed in the closing act of the Treaty oi Vienna, 18 15, d'une nais- 
sance egale avec les brinces sowverains, or those in succession to be- 
come so. 

"It was, therefore, a prudent arrangement for princes who preferred 
the claims of natural affection to those of ambition, to form a Mor- 



* By the treaties of Campio Formio, 1797 ; of Luneville, 9th of February, 
1801 ; and of Vienna, 14th of October, 1809. 

t At Austerlitz, the 2nd of December, 1805, and by the peace of Tilsit, the 
8th of July, 1807. 

% The Kings of France, of Naples, and Sardinia, and two Kings of Spain, 
Charles IV. and Ferdinand VII. 

§ The Kings of Etruria, of Italy, of Naples, of Holland, of Bavaria, of 
Wurtemberg, of Saxony, and of Westphalia. 

II The 15th of December, 1809, the day of the most ceremonious and extra- 
ordinary divorce which is mentioned in history. 

T 



374 CHARACTER OF THE NABOB. 

ganatic marriage, which would reconcile the duties of their station with 
their social wishes. In this manner, after the death of his first wife, 
the Princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Frederic William III., father of 
the present and previous King of Prussia, was enabled to follow the 
dictates of his affection for the Countess of Liegnitz, who was received 
by all his family as a true wife, and still continues to enjoy their respect. 
In a similar manner, the last King of Denmark associated to himself 
and ennobled the Countess Danner. Nor would, in our country, 
the union of the late Duke of Sussex with the Duchess of Inverness 
be dissimilar. The social position of all three families was affected in 
no disreputable manner by such a connexion, but they could not attain 
the full rights of marriage or the civil state of their husbands, because 
they were not ebenburtig or de naissance egale. 

"In the Golden Bull of the Empire promulgated in the fourteenth 
century, legitimacy is expressly demanded as an imperative condition to 
any sovereignty ; and it is of no consequence how long or how distant 
that stain may have blemished a family. Our ducal houses of Grafton 
and St. Albans have every right of their high rank, but in their royal 
quarterings the bar sinister is indelible." 



CHARACTER OF THE NABOB. 

The Nabob, from naib, in the popular language of India, is defined 
by Sir Thomas Herbert, in his Travels, published in 1634, as " a noble- 
man in the language of the Mogul's kingdom, which hath mixed up with 
much of the Persian." The term, applied to a man grown rich in India 
and returning to England, became familiar enough, and was frequently 
a character upon our stage. Dr. Knox, in his Spirit of Despotism, thus 
portrays the class of men to which the Nabob belonged Speaking of 
the ideas imbibed in youth, in the East Indies, as unfavourable to 
liberty, our essayist remarks : — " Enriched at an early age, the adventurer 
returns to England. His property admits him to the higher circles of 
fashionable life. He aims at rivalling or excelling all the old nobility in 
the splendour of his mansions, the finery of his carnages, the number 
of his liveried train, the profusion of his table, in every unmanly in- 
dulgence which an empty vanity can covet, and a full purse procure. 
Such a man, when he looks from the window of his superb mansion 
and sees the people pass, cannot endure the idea that they are of as 
much consequence as himself in the eye of the law ; and that he dares 
not insult or oppress the unfortunate being who rakes his kennel, or 
sweeps his chimney." 

We find a satirical portrait of the Nabob in the New Monthly Magazine 
of thirty years since. The writer is describing the clubmen of the 
Oriental, in Hanover-square. " From the outside the club-house looks 
like a prison ; enter it — it looks like an hospital, in which a smell of 
curry-powder pervades the ' wards/ wards filled with venerable patients, 
dressed in nankeen shorts, yellow stockings and gaiters, and faces to 
match. There may still be seen pigtails in all their pristine perfection. It 



CHARACTER OF THE NABOB, 275 

is the region of calico shirts, returned writers, and guinea-pigs grown 
into bores. Such is the Nabobbery into which Harley-street, Wimpole- 
street, and Gloucester-place, daily empty their precious stores of bilious 
humanity." 

Macaulay, in his masterly paper on the great Lord Clive, portrays 
the Nabob of a century since, in his fearful picture of the singular atro- 
city of " the Black Hole," when the answer to the poor captives, who 
strove to bribe their gaolers, was, that nothing could be done without 
the Nabob's orders ; that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be 
angry if anybody woke him. Nor did the horrors of that night awake 
either pity or remorse in the bosom of the savage Nabob. The Nabobs 
were native princes, though in the conquest of India they stood to the 
British authorities in the same relation in which the last drivelling Chil- 
perics and Childerics of the Merovingian line stood to their able and 
vigorous Mayors of the Palace, to Charles Martel and to Pepin. Then 
the great events which had taken place in India, had called into existence 
a new class of Englishmen, to whom their countrymen gave the name of 
Nabobs. These persons, whom Knox has so well characterized, soon 
became a most unpopular class of men. " That they had sprung from 
obscurity," says Macaulay ; " that they had acquired great wealth; that 
they exhibited it insolently ; that they spent it extravagantly ; that they 
raised the price of everything in the neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to 
rotten boroughs ; that their liveries outshone those of dukes ; that their 
coaches were finer than that of the Lord Mayor ; that the examples of 
their large and ill-governed households corrupted half the servants in 
the country ; that some of them, with all their magnificence, could not 
catch the tone of good society ; but, in spite of the studs, the crowd of 
menials, of the plate and the Dresden china, of the venison and Bur- 
gundy, were still low men. These things excited— both in the class 
from which they had sprung, and the class into which they attempted 
to force themselves — the bitter aversion which is the effect of mingled 
envy and contempt. But when it was also rumoured that the fortune 
which had enabled its possessor to eclipse the Lord- Lieutenant on the 
race-ground, or to carry the county against the head of a house as old as 
Domesday Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith ; by 
deposing legitimate princes ; by reducing whole provinces to beggary, all 
the higher and better, as well as all the low and evil parts of human nature, 
were stirred against the wretch who had obtained by guilt and dishonour 
the riches which he now lavished with arrogant and inelegant profusion. 
The unfortunate Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against 
which comedy has pointed the most merciless ridicule ; and of those crimes 
which have thrown the deepest gloom over tragedy, of Turcaret and 
Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the Third. A tempest of 
execration and derision, such as can be compared only to that outbreak 
of public feeling against the Puritans, which took place at the time of 
the Restoration, burst on the servants of the Company. The humane 
man was horror-struck at the way in which they had got their money ; 
the thrifty man at the way in which they spent it. The Dilettante 
sneered at their want of taste; the Maccaroni blackballed them as 

T 2 



276 MEMORY OF DANIEL 0" CON NELL. 

vulgar fellows. Writers, the most unlike in sentiment and style, Metho- 
dists and libertines, philosophers and buffoons, were for once on the 
same side. It is hardly too much to say that, during a space of about 
thirty years, the whole lighter literature of England was coloured by the 
feelings which we have described. Foote brought on the stage an Anglo- 
Indian chief, dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical, ashamed of the 
humble friends ot his youth, hating the aristocracy, yet childishly eager 
to be numbered among them ; squandering his wealth on panders and 
flatterers, tricking out his chairmen with the most costly hothouse 
flowers, and astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and 
jaghires. Mackenzie, with more delicate humour, depicted a plain 
country family raised by the Indian acquisitions of one its members to 
sudden opulence, and exciting derision by an awkward mimicry of the 
manners of the great. Cowper, in that lofty expostulation which glows 
with the very spirit of the Hebrew poets, places the oppression of India 
foremost in the list of those national crimes for which God had punished 
England with years of disastrous war, with discomfiture in her own 
seas, and with the loss of her transatlantic empire. If any of our readers 
will take the trouble to search in the dusty recesses of circulating 
libraries, for some novel published sixty years ago, the chance is that the 
villain or sub-villain of the story will prove to be a savage old Nabob, 
with an immense fortune, a tawny complexion, a bad liver, and a worse 
heart." This is Macaulay Severus. 

MEMORY OF DANIEL O'CONNELL. 
A tourist, who visited O'Connell's residence, in Ireland, not long after 
the Liberator had been gathered to his fathers, gives the following 
touching picture of the place: — "The wild ruin of the house where 
Daniel was born stands in an admirable situation for smuggling, and so 
does the abbey ; and the legend runs that the facility was abundantly 
used. Smuggling is quite over now, as the coast-guard tell with a sigh. 
And agitation is over too. So the one house stands a ruin, and the 
other is rotting away in damp and neglect. It is inhabited ; it is even 
filled with company at times ; but not the less forlorn in its appearance, 
when seen from a nearer point than the mountain roads, choked by its 
own woods, which grow almost up to the windows, stained with damp, 
out of joint, unrepaired, unrenewed : it is a truly melancholy spectacle. 
Melancholy to all eyes, it is most so to the minds of those who can go 
beyond a quarter of a century and hear again the shouts which hailed the 
advent of the Liberator, and see again the reverent enthusiasm which 
watched him from afar, when he rested at Derrynane from his toils, and 
went to hunt among the hills, or cruise about his bay. Now, there is his 
empty yacht in the sound, and his chair in the chapel covered with black 
cloth. All else that he enjoyed there, in his vast wealth of money, 
fame, and popular love, seems to be dropping away to destruction. 
It is said that his name is scarcely ever mentioned in Ireland now, 
When the news of his death arrived, there was grief for three or four 
days, and then he seemed to be forgotten." 



*11 
(Btth&iuBixtul listorm 




SPURIOUS CHARTERS. 

H ARTERS require to be examined and investigated with much 
care. If authentic, they are the best possible guides to history; 
if spurious, the most mischievous deluders. Worldly in- 
terest often tempted the monks to commit forgery, though 
their falsifications were chiefly defensive. Lands which unquestionably 
belonged to the Church were frequently held merely by prescriptive 
possession, unaccompanied by deeds and charters. The right was 
lawful, but there were no means of proving the right. And when 
the monastery was troubled and impleaded by the Norman Justitiar, 
or the Soke invaded by the Norman Baron, the Abbot and his 
brethren would have recourse to the pious fraud of inventing a 
charter for the purpose of protecting property which, however lawfully 
acquired and honestly enjoyed, was likely to be wrested from them by 
the captious niceties of the Norman jurisprudence or the greedy tyranny 
of the Norman sword. These counterfeits are sometimes detected by 
the pains which were taken to give them currency. It is familiarly 
known that the Anglo-Saxons confirmed their deeds by subscribing the 
sign of the cross, and that the charters themselves are fairly but plainly 
engrossed upon parchment. But instead of imitating these unostenta- 
tious instruments, the elaborate forgers often endeavoured to obtain 
respect for their fabrications by investing them with as much splendour 
as possible ; and those grand crosses of gold, vermilion, and azure, which 
dazzled the eyes and deceived the judgment of the court when pro- 
duced before a bench of simple and unsuspecting lawyers, now reveal 
the secret fraud to the lynx-eyed antiquary. According to Ingulphus 
these modes of adornment prevailed long before the reign of the Con- 
fessor. The foundation charter of Croyland, purporting to have been 
granted by Ethelbald, is richly adorned, from whence it obtained the 
name of the " Golden Charter," and the ancient chirographs, gay with 
paintings and illuminations, and the charters of the Mercian kings 
covered with embellishments, are enumerated by him amongst the 
treasures which were consumed when the monastery was destroyed by 
fire in the year 1091.* But we can state, upon the information of the 
most competent living authority, that there is no charter of this descrip- 



* The Croyland charter, in Saxon characters, in the possession of Robert 
Hunter, Esq., lord of the place, was shown to the Society of Antiquaries, as 
appears by their minutes, by Mr. Lethellier, in 1734. — (Gough's Croyland, Pref. 
viii.) In the opinion of Humphry Wanley, " it was not much older, if anything 
at all, than Henry II. 's time." The fac-simile given by Hickes (Dissertatio 
Epistolaris, tab. D) does not leave the slightest doubt of the imposture. 



278 THE INQUISITION. 

tion which is not manifestly spurious. The " Golden Charter" bears the 
impress of falsity ; and unless it be supposed that all the genuine illu- 
minated charters in England perished by sympathy when those at Croy- 
land felt the flame, we must infer that the writer of the history of In- 
gulphus erred either through ignorance or design. — Quarterly Review. 



THE INQUISITION. 

Endless was the catalogue of most pious men and eminent scholars 
who underwent purification as it was termed, in this den of superstition 
and tyranny. The culprit was not permitted to speak with his attorney 
except in the presence of the inquisitor, and a notary who took notes 
and certified what passed ; and so far from the names of the informer 
or of the witnesses being supplied, everything that could facilitate the ex- 
planation of them was expunged from the declarations ; and the pri- 
soners, one and all, in their dungeons, might truly exclaim with Fray 
Luis de Leon, " I feel the pain, but see not the hand which inflicts it." 
Even in the early days of the Inquisition, torture was carried to such an 
extent, that Sixtus IV., in a brief published Jan. 29, 1482, could not 
refrain from deploring the well-known truth, in lamentations which 
were re-echoed from all parts of Christendom. The formula of the 
sentence of torture began thus, Christo nomine invocato ; and. it was 
therein expressed that the torture should endure as long as it pleased 
the Inquisitors ; a protest was also added, that if during the torture the 
culprit should die, or be maimed, or if effusion of blood, or mutilation 
of limb should ensue, the fault should be chargeable to the culprit, and 
not to the Inquisitors. The culprit was bound by an oath of secrecy, 
strengthened by fearful penalties, not to divulge anything that he had 
seen, known, or heard in the dismal precincts of that unholy tribunal — 
a secrecy illegal and tyrannical, but which constituted the soul of that 
monstrous association, and by which its judges were sheltered against 
all responsibility. 

In Don Quixote are various passages which are levelled at the abomi- 
nable tyranny of the Inquisition, the absurd doctrines of flagellation, and 
the vices and frauds of Papal Rome. The disenchantment of Dulcinea by 
the whipping of Sancho, has an evident reference to what was then a 
great source of wealth to the clergy, who exacted large sums from the 
opulent, under the pretence of self-inflicted flagellations, to compensate 
for the sins of those who could afford to pay for the compromise. 
There were, however, some who inflicted this penance on themselves 
with real severity. The great Lope de Vega, then Secretary of the In- 
quisition, is said to have died of the effects of the self-applied disci- 
pline. Sancho, at first, objects to it ; he does not see what his penance 
and sufferings can have to do with the sins and ti aggressions of others. 
But as soon as he is to be paid for every lash, he undergoes the penance 
like a true friar, taking care so to manage it, as he intimates the priests 
did their flagellations, as not to feel any pain from it. 

What shall we say of the Quixotism of Cervantes in thus boldly at- 



FIGHTING ABBOTS AND PRELATES. 279 



tacking this abuse, amidst a credulous laity attached to it, and a knavish 
clergy interested in the continuance of the imposition ? The adventure 
of the speaking head, which Cervantes tells us " was broken in pieces 
by order of those watchful sentinels of our faith, the gentlemen of the 
Inquisition/' and that of the prophesying ape, as to whom Don Quixote 
expresses his surprise that he has not been accused before the Inquisition, 
and examined by torture, till he confessed by what or whom he divines 
— are both levelled at the Inquisition. In that of the restoration of 
Altisidora to life, Sancho Panza was dressed in the ridiculous suit 
which was worn at the stake by the victims of the Inquisition, as Cer- 
vantes himself tells us. Even if he had not risked the observation, the 
allusion would have been obvious, in comparing the account of Sancho's 
dress, with the following account of the execution of the Bohemian 
martyr, John Huss, who was burnt alive in 141 5, for holding that in 
the eucharist, the wine as well as the bread ought to be administered to 
the laity, — " They put a paper coronet on his head, on which they 
painted three devils, with this inscription, an arch heretic ;" and said, " we 
devote thy soul to the infernal devils." When the painted paper was 
put on his head, one of the bishops said, " now we commit thy soul to 
the devil." At the stake the paper crown falling off his head, the soldiers 
put it on again, saying, " that it must be burnt with the devils whom he 
served." The devoting of the soul of their victim to the infernal devils 
was pro salute animx. On these painted flames and painted devils, how- 
ever, Sancho sarcastically observes, " Well enough yet ! these do not 
burn me, nor do these carry me away." Sancho's account of his own 
orthodoxy is very Catholic: — I "believe in all that our Holy Church 
prescribes ; and I mortally hate all Jews and heretics." What, how- 
ever, this original and inimitable author might have done, and how far, 
in his display of the corruptions of Papal Rome, he would have surpassed 
all that Lucian has said on the follies and absurdities of polytheism, 
may be conjectured from an anecdote in the Segrasiana : upon the 
French ambassador complimenting Cervantes on the wit and humour of 
Don Quixote, he replied, " I would have made it much more diverting 
if I had not been afraid of the Inquisition." 



FIGHTING ABBOTS AND PRELATES OF THE MIDDLE 
AGES. 

In the lively pages of Froissart we find some brilliant episodes of the 
military Abbots and Prelates of the Middle Ages. We have all heard 
of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, who, at the battle of Hastings, 

Un baston teneit en son poing. 
Philip de Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, beat down with a mace, at the 
battle of Bouvines, Longsword, Earl of Salisbury. This was the same 
bishop whose bloody hauberk King Richard I. sent to the Pope with the 
message, " This have we found. Know now whether it be thy son's 
coat or no !" The Archbishop of Sens was killed at Agincourt. An 



2 8o ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS A'BECKET. 

Abbot who defended the town of Hainecourt in 1339, seems to have 
had the spirit and strength of Friar Tuck. He was a very bold and 
valiant man in arms, says Froissart, and was seen in the front rank deal- 
ing and receiving blows. In an encounter at the barriers of the town, 
my lord Abbot seized the spear of Messire Henri de Flandre, and drew 
it through the clefts of the palisade. Then he got hold of the knight's arm, 
and drew it through as far as the shoulder, and would have drawn him in 
altogether if the opening had been wide enough. " I assure you," says 
Frcissart, " that the said Messire Henri was not at his ease while the 
Abbot thus held him, for the Abbot was strong and fierce, and pulled 
at him without sparing him. On the other hand, the knights pulled 
against him to rescue Messire Henri ; and this wrestling and pulling 
continued a long time, so that Messire Henri was much hurt." At 
last he was rescued, but the Abbot kept his spear. The same author 
speaks of great feats of arms pertormed by a churchman who wielded a 
two-handed sword. The clergy imitated or even excelled the laity, not 
only in strength and skill in arms, but also in appetite for blood and 
plunder. Henry Spenser, Bishop of Norwich, militia quam theologize 
peritior, raised an army, with the sanction of King Richard II., to fight 
for Pope Urban against the rival Pope Clement. The popularity of the 
Bishop and the holiness of the cause enabled him to collect an army 
rapidly. They sailed from Sandwich to Calais, where they were to wait 
for Sir William Beauchamp, whom the King had appointed to com- 
mand. But the Bishop soon grew tired of inactivity. He was deter- 
mined to fight some one ; and as it was not convenient to attack France 
with his small force, he announced his intention of leading it against 
Flanders, although the Count of Flanders was Urbanist like himself, 
and he was engaged to make war on Clementines only. But the Bishop 
was not to be disappointed. His army marched into Gravelines, where 
they attacked and pillaged a church, and killed a great many men, 
women, and children, who had taken retuge there. They became mas- 
ters of the town, where they found themselves in very pleasant quarters. 
The Bishop next led them against Dunkirk. An officer remonstrated, 
urging that the people of Dunkirk were Urbanists. " How do we 
know that ?" asked the Bishop. The officer begged that a herald might 
be sent to inquire. A herald was sent, but he was killed by the country- 
people in ignorance. The Bishop was delighted. Here was a good 
casus belli. He attacked Dunkirk, and carried it with great slaughter of 
the Dunkirkers. Afterwards he made himself master of all the coast 
from Gravelines to Sluys, and laid siege to Ypres. The King of France 
now assembled a great army, winch caused the Bishop to raise the siege 
and retire to Calais, whence he returned to England. He was fined and 
disgraced for having so badly expended the Pope's money. — Saturday 

Review, 1868. 

» 

ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS A'BECKET. 

In the Quarterly Review, No. t86, the circumstances attending the 
murder of this bold priest have been carefully collated, and present 



ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS A BECKET. 281 

some new researches. Contrary to the received notion, Becket was not 
killed in front of the altar of Canterbury Cathedral ; he was slain 
in the choir confronting his pursuers, when they succeeded in arresting 
his flight upwards to the sacrosanct chapel of St. Blaise, in the roof of 
the cathedral. The assassins had challenged him, on the part of Henry, 
in the course of the afternoon, and a long- continued angry altercation 
had passed between them in the presence of the monks, who surrounded 
their archbishop, in his private chamber. When the murderers left to 
get their arms, the monks hurried Becket by the cloisters into the 
church, in the vain hope of sanctuary. When Tracy, one of the 
assassins, attacked Becket, the latter grappled with and flung him on 
the floor of the choir. Fitzurse then struck at the archbishop with his 
sword, but only wounded him slightly in the head ; breaking, however, 
the arm of Grim, a German monk, which was raised to ward off the 
blow. Another sword-cut prostrated Becket, and then, as he lay, 
Tracy smote him with such force that he cut off the crown of his head, 
cleaving through brain and bone, and breaking his sword on the stone 
pavement. So ended the career of the archbishop. 

The Dean of Chichester (Dr. Hook) gives this picturesque description 
of this terrific scene, founded on a close study of authorities : 

" His friends had more fear for Becket than Becket for himself. The 
gates were closed and barred, but presently sounds were heard of those 
without, striving to break in. The lawless Robert de Broc was hewing 
at the door with an axe. All around Becket was the confusion of 
terror : he only was calm. Again spoke John of Salisbury with his 
cold prudence — ' Thou wilt never take counsel : they seek thy life.' — 
' I am prepared to die.' — ' We who are sinners are not so weary of 
life.' — ' God's will be done.' The sounds without grew wilder. All 
around him entreated Becket to seek sanctuary in the church. He 
refused, whether from religious reluctance that the holy place should be 
stained with his blood, or from the nobler motive of sparing his assassins 
this deep aggravation of their crime. They urged that the bell was 
already tolling for vespers. He seemed to give a reluctant consent ; but 
he would not move without the dignity of his crosier carried before him. 
With gentle compulsion they half drew, half carried him through a 
private chamber, they in all the hasty agony of terror, he striving to 
waintain his solemn state, into the church. The din of the armed men 
was ringing in the cloister. The affrighted monks broke off the service ; 
some hastened to close the doors ; Becket commanded them to desist — 
• No one should be debarred from entering the house of God.' John 
of Salisbury and the rest fled and hid themselves behind the altars x and 
in other dark places. The Archbishop might have escaped into the 
dark and intricate crypt, or into a chapel in the roof. There remained 
only the Canon Robert (of Merton), Fitz-Stephen, and the faithful 
Edward Grim. Becket stood between the altar of St. Benedict and 
that of the Virgin. It was thought that Becket contemplated taking his 
seat on his archiepiscopal throne near the high altar. 

" Through the open door of the cloister came rushing in the four, fully 
armed, some with axes in their hands, with two or three wild followers, 



282 ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS A' BECKET. 

through the dim and bewildering twilight. The knights shouted aloud, 
' Where is the traitor ?' No answer came back. ' Where is the Arch- 
bishop?' — 'Behold me, no traitor, but a priest of God!' Another 
fierce and rapid altercation followed : they demanded the absolution of 
the bishops, his own surrender to the King's justice. They strove to 
seize him and to drag him forth from the church (even they had awe 
of the holy place), either to kill him without, or carry him in bonds to 
the King. He clung to the pillar. In the struggle he grappled with 
De Tracy, and with desperate strength dashed him on the pavement. 
His passion rose ; he called Fitzurse by a foul name, a pander. These 
were almost his last words (how unlike those of Stephen and the 
greater than Stephen !) He taunted Fitzurse with his fealty sworn to 
himselr. ' I owe no fealty but to my King !' returned the maddened 
soldier, and struck the first blow. Edward Grim interposed his arm, 
which was almost severed off. The sword struck Becket, but slightly, 
on the head. Becket received it in an attitude of prayer — ' Lord, receive 
my spirit/ with an ejaculation to the saints of the church, Blow fol- 
lowed blow (Tracy seems to have dealt the first mortal wound), till all, 
unless perhaps De Morville, had wreaked their vengeance. The last, 
that of Richard de Brito, smote off a piece of his skull. Hugh of 
Horsea, their follower, a renegade priest surnamed Mauclerk, set his 
heel upon his neck, and crushed out the blood and brains. ' Away V 
said the brutal ruffian, ' it is time that we were gone.' They rushed 
out to plunder the archiepiscopal palace. 

" The mangled body was left on the pavement ; and when his affrighted 
followers ventured to approach to perform the last offices, an incident 
occurred which, however incongruous, is too characteristic to be sup- 
pressed. Amid their adoring awe at his courage and constancy, their 
profound sorrow for his loss, they broke out into a rapture of wonder 
and delight on discovering not merely that his whole body was swathed 
in the coarsest sackcloth, but that his lower garments were swarming 
with vermin. From that moment miracles began. Even the populace 
had before been divided; voices had been heard among the crowd 
denying him to be a martyr ; he was but the victim of his own obstinacy. 
The Archbishop of York even after this dared to preach that it was a 
judgment of God against Becket — that 'he perished, like Pharaoh, in 
his pride.' But the torrent swept away at once all this resistance. The 
Government inhibited the miracles, but faith in miracles scorns obedience 
to human laws. The Passion of the Martyr Thomas was saddened 
and glorified every day with new incidents of its atrocity, of his holy 
firmness, of wonders wrought by his remains."* 

South Mailing, an archiepiscopal manor of Canterbury, was, as late 
as the fourteenth century, invested with supernatural terrors from the 
popular tradition connected with the assassins of a Becket, so well told 
by Dr. Stanley, in his Memorials of Canterbury : " They rode to Salt- 
wood the night of the deed ; the next day (forty miles by the coast) 
to South Mailing. On entering the house they threw off their arms 



Lives of the Archbishop of Canterbury. 



ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS A' BECKET. 283 

and trappings on the dining-table, which stood in the hall, and after 
supper gathered round the blazing hearth. Suddenly, the table started 
back, and threw its burden to the ground. The attendants, roused by 
the crash, rushed in with lights, and replaced the arms. But soon a 
second and still louder crash was heard, and the various articles were 
thrown still further off. Soldiers, and servants with torches scrambled 
in vain under the solid table to find the cause of its convulsions, till one 
of the conscience-stricken knights suggested that it was indignantly 
refusing to bear the sacrilegious burden of their arms — the earliest and 
most memorable instance," adds Dr. Stanley, sarcastically, " of a rap- 
ping, leaping, and turning table." 

The well-known legend has it that evil befel the murderers by sea 
and land, and that no one of them ever after throve or prospered, and 
such was, indeed, the popular belief for nearly seven centuries. But the 
facts are totally different. Moreville, who kept back the crowd at the 
door of the choir, while the associate assassins were doing the king's 
will on Becket, lived and died Chief Justice in Eyre, north of Trent — 
that is to say, one of the principal judges of England. Tracy was 
created Grand Justiciary of Normandy, by Henry, within four years of 
the assassination. Fitzurse went to Ireland and founded the Celto- 
Norman sept, known as the Macmahons of the county of Wexford ; 
and Bret, the fourth murderer, died in his bed in due course, after 
spending a long life in the enjoyment of his estates, in Devonshire, thus 
negativing the historical justice. The notorious atrocity of the crime is 
thought to have given rise to the exclamation, still to be occasionally 
heard in expression of surprise and inquiry, " What have I done ; have 
I murdered an archbishop ?" 

A curious legendary tale is related of the marriage of a Becket's 
parents. It is said that Gilbert, his father, had, in his youth, followed 
the Crusaders to Palestine, and while in the East had been taken 
prisoner by a Saracen, or Moor, of high rank. Confined by the latter 
within his own castle, the young Englishman's personal attractions and 
miserable condition alike melted the heart of the captor's daughter, a 
fair Mohammedan, who enabled him to escape from prison, and regain 
his native country ; the Moor's daughter obtaining a promise from 
Gilbert, that as soon as he had settled quietly in his own land, he would 
send for and marry his protectress. Years passed on, but Gilbert did 
not keep his promise, when the love-lorn maiden proceeded to England, 
and though knowing nothing of the English language beyond the 
Christian name of her lover, and his place of residence, Cheapside, 
in London ,* she continued to search him out, and found him ready to 
fulfil his former promise, by making her his wife. Previous to her 
marriage, she professed her conversion to Christianity, and was baptized 
with great solemnity, in S. Paul's Cathedral, no less than six bishops 
assisting at the ceremony. The only child of this union was the cele- 
brated Thomas a Becket. 



* According to the Annals of Dunstahle, in the year 1132, all London was 
burnt, through a fire which began in the house of Gilbert Becket, father of the 
Archbishop. 



284 ASSASSINATION OF THOMAS A' BECKET. 

This singular story has found credence in recent times, with Dr. 
Giles, M. Thierry, Mr. Froude, and M. Michelet ; but by an accredited 
biographer of Becket, Canon Robertson, it is rejected as a legendary 
story, wholly unsupported by the evidence of those chroniclers who 
were Becket's contemporaries. It gave rise, both in England and 
Scotland, to more than one ballad, with various embellishments. 

The views of the character of Thomas a Becket have changed with 
the times. From the period of his death to the Reformation his shrine 
in Canterbury Cathedral continued to be visited by crowds of pilgrims, 
whose offerings proved a valuable source of revenue. At the Reforma- 
tion, the shrine was dismantled and plundered, and the name of the 
saint himself excluded from the calendar in the reformed liturgy. An 
entire revulsion of feeling now took place regarding him, and from the 
rank of a holy man and a martyr he descended, in general estimation, 
to the level of a presumptuous priest, and audacious rebel. This view of 
his character prevailed generally up to the present day, when a second 
revolution in public opinion took place ; and a Becket has found several 
able eulogists, not only as an ecclesiastic, but in reference to principles of 
a different nature: motives of patriotism and resistance to feudal tyranny. 
These last mentioned views are advocated by M. Thierry and Mr. 
Froude, the former of whom regards a Becket in the same aspect that 
he does Robin Hood, as the vindicator of Saxon rights and liberties 
against Norman oppression ; the latter sees in him a bulwark to the 
people against monarchical and baronial outrages, such as the power of 
the church often was in mediaeval times. M. Thierry's view seems to 
be entirely fanciful ; and neither in this light, nor in the view taken by 
Mr. Froude, is it possible to attribute to a Becket the character of a 
hero or a martyr ; though as the former he must ever appear to parties 
who consider it impossible to exalt too highly the power of the 
church. 

Archbishop Manning has declared that " St. Thomas died in defence of 
the law of England. As an Englishman he stood up for the law of the 
land against the most atrocious, corrupt, and oppressive exercise of royal 
prerogative by one whom no English historian would venture to defend. 
The first article of Magna Charta is ' The Church shall enjoy its 
liberty.' That embodies and expresses the very cause for which St. 
Thomas laid down his life. That St. Thomas resisted the excess of 
royal power, interfering with the freedom of religion and conscience. 
Take one great example : the King claimed that no one should be put out 
of the church, by spiritual authority, without his leave. Another point 
was that in the election of bishops the persons should be chosen by his 
recommendation. The truth is that we have come to a time when 
the people of England and of Scotland have literally vindicated for 
themselves the very principle of spiritual liberty for which St. Thomas 
suffered." 

Nevertheless, the evidence upon this controverted event lies far and 

wide, and it has been inquired by an exigeant critic, athirst for the whole 

truth, " When, we ask, for the ten thousandth time, are we to have a 

decent edition of all that appertains to Saint Thomas of Canterbury ' 



WHO WERE THE PURITANS? 283 



HOSTILITY TO HOBBES. 

The most dangerous opponent of the clergy in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, was certainly Thomas Hobbes, the subtlest dialectician of his 
time ; a writer, too, of singular clearness, and among British mathe- 
maticians inferior only to Berkeley. This profound thinker published 
several speculations very unfavourable to the church, and directly op- 
posed to principles which are essential to ecclesiastical authority. As a 
natural consequence he was hated by the clergy ; his doctrines were 
declared to be highly pernicious; and he was accused of wishing to sub- 
vert the national religion, and corrupt the national morals. So far did 
this proceed, that, during his life, and for several years after his death, 
every man who ventured to think for himself, was stigmatized as a 
Hobbist, or, as it was sometimes called, a Hobbian : this was a common 
expression for whoever attacked established opinions, late in the 
seventeenth and early in the eighteenth century. Such marked hos- 
tility on the part of the clergy was a sufficient recommendation to the 
favour of Charles II. The King, even before his accession, had imbibed 
many of his principles ; and after the Restoration he treated the author 
with what was deemed a scandalous respect. He protected him from 
his enemies : he somewhat ostentatiously hung up his portrait in his 
own private room at Whitehall ; and he even conferred a pension on 
this, the most formidable opponent who had yet appeared against the 
spiritual hierarchy. — Buckle's Hist. Civilization, vol. i. pp. 356-357. 

In 1838, when the life of Hobbes appeared in the Penny Cyclopedia, 
it was strongly objected to as unsuited by its partisan feeling for that 
work ; at its close the writer remarks : " so deep and enduring is the 
impression made upon the public mind, that ' Hobbes, the atheist,' or 
' Hobbes, the apologist of tyranny,' is still regarded with pious or with 
republican horror by all but the extremely few, who have ventured to 
examine his writings." (Austin's Province of Jurisprudence determined, 
p. 299, note.) The last published edition of the Works of Hobbes is 
that edited and printed by the late Sir William Molesworth, at great 
cost, in fourteen 8vo volumes. 



WHO WERE THE PURITANS ? 

Dr. Vaughan, in his Revolutions in English History, gives an estimate 
of the Puritans, which his critic, in the Saturday Review, considers strik- 
ing, and in a measure, new. Dr. Vaughan may have had very natural 
prepossessions in favour of the Puritans, but he judges them with can- 
dour, and, as we think, with considerable insight into their real character 
and position. Puritanism is apt to.be misjudged in these days because 
it has become identified, to many minds, with some of its fruits of very 
mixed value which have endured to the present day ; and as we have 
had to resist the attacks of a blind and domineering bigotry, we are apt 
to look with disfavour on the primary authors of what we have had 
cause to dislike in our own times. But it should be remembered, as 



286 THE STORY OF JOHN OF LEYDEN. 

Dr. Vaughan shows at some length, that the Puritans, in the first period 
at least of the parliamentary struggle, were only men who were strongly 
inclined to the Reformed religion, and who had a peculiar theory about 
the Bible. They were not separated by any social barrier like that 
which, since the Restoration, has divided the Nonconformists from the 
members of the Church of England. They were not out of the Church 
of England at all. One squire was a Puritan, and the next squire was 
not. The rector of one parish was a Puritan, and the rector of the next 
parish was an Arminian or a follower of Laud. Puritanism did not dis- 
connect itself from any form or part of a liberal education. It was a 
way of thinking on a particular subject, and that was all, just as, fifteen 
years ago, before every one was converted in England to Free Trade, 
one earl might be a Protectionist and another a Free Trader ; but both 
might buy horses and pictures, and make Latin quotations, and go to 
county balls, and be in all respects the same sort of men, except for this 
one difference of opinion. The theories of the Puritans on religion 
also led them to entertain views on politics hostile to the excessive power 
of any temporal authority ; and thus they came to be marked off into 
a political party, and, as a political party, embarked on that course which 
led to the death of Charles and the restoration of his son. Originally, 
however, they were ordinary Englishmen, of all tastes, habits, and posi- 
tions, though with a peculiar set of views about religion. There is much 
instruction in this way of regarding them, short as is the period to which 
it can historically be applied. At any rate it is worth noticing that, 
after holding a different position for the century and a half after the 
Restoration, they, or the inheritors of their peculiar opinions, have again 
returned to the position held by the Puritans in the early part of 
Charles I.'s reign, and now it can no longer be said that the holders of 
different theological opinions are divided by lines of social demarcation. 



THE STORY OF JOHN OF LEYDEN. 

The revolt of the fanatic Anabaptists in Miinster (Westphalia) is a 
strange admixture of the ludicrous with the terrors of the Reformation, 
the interest of which has been resuscitated by the popularity of Meyer- 
beer's grand opera of " Le Prophete." The story, briefly told, is 
this : In 1530 John Matthias of Haarlem, and John Boccold (John of 
Ley den) at the head of their followers, among the most conspicuous of 
whom were Knipperdoling and Bernard Rothman, a celebrated preacher, 
succeeded in making themselves masters of the city of Miinster, which 
was soon besieged by its bishop, Count Waldeck. Matthias, a baker, 
appeared next day, armed with a spear, and, crying out that God had 
commanded him to beat off the enemy, again sallied forth at the head of 
only thirty of his followers, and, with them, was speedily despatched. 
John of Ley den, a tailor, now came to the rescue, declaring that the 
fate of Matthias had been revealed to him in a vision long before. 

Leyden made no rash sallies upon the opposing army, but contented 
himself by defending the city from assault. Having, by prophecies and 



THE STORY OF JOHN OF LEV DEN. 287 

preaching, prepared the minds of the people for some extraordinary- 
event, he went naked through the streets proclaiming that the kingdom 
of Sion was at hand, that whatever was highest upon earth should be 
debased, and what was lowest should be exalted. He then ordered 
most of the churches to be pulled down and the senators to be de- 
graded, at the same time appointing Knipperdoling, who had joined the 
Anabaptists with Rothman, to exercise the office of common hangman. 
A new prophet arising called the mob into the market place, and in- 
formed them that by command of Heaven John of Ley den was to be 
made King of the World, and that he should slay all the kings and 
princes upon earth. This prophet had no sooner ended his speech than 
Boccold fell upon his knees, and, raising, his hands to heaven, declared 
that all this had been revealed to him many days since. Thereupon he 
assumed all the state of majesty, abrogated the authority of the twelve 
j udges, and ordained an order of nobility to wait upon him. He had a 
throne, covered with cloth of gold, erected in the market place, and there 
he sat in the administration of justice: having decreed that polygamy 
was lawful, he took to himself three wives, and shortly after added 
eleven more. His example was speedily followed by the rest of the 
Anabaptists ; and, when some of the citizens attempted to resist the in- 
novation, fifty of them were killed upon the spot, and others were bound 
to trees and shot, or put to death in a manner less merciful. 

But retribution was at hand. . The bishop's hands having been 
strengthened by a fresh supply of men, the city was closely invested. 
Provisions within began to fail. Fearful of a famine, the people talked 
of laying hands on the tailor-king and surrendering him to the besiegers. 
One of the monarch's wives, pitying the sufferings of the inhabitants, 
ventured to say that she did not see how it could be the will of God 
that poor people should daily perish for lack of food. Boccold had the 
unfortunate woman taken to the market-place, and there, in the presence 
of his other wives, he struck her head off. Still the famine increased. 
Many died every day, and others stole away to the besieging army. 
The general commanding the beleaguering forces determined to assault 
the place. The Anabaptists, by this time awake to their peril, rushed 
to the spot, and opposed the entrance of any more of the besiegers, but 
were at length overwhelmed. Rothman, dreading to fall alive into the 
enemy's hands, threw himself upon them and was cut to pieces. The 
king, Knipperdoling, and Krechting were made prisoners. 

After the capture of the place, the Icing and his chief followers were led 
about from city to city, exposed to the contempt and mockery of the 
people, for above six months. They were at last carried back to 
Munster, and on the 25th of January, 1536, John of Leyden, Knipper- 
doling, and Krechting, were brought out for execution. John of 
Leyden was the first who suffered. Placed on a scaffold, and tied to a 
stake, he was subjected to the most cruel tortures for above an hour, 
and was then killed by being run through the breast. His two com- 
panions were tortured and executed in the same manner, and the three 
bodies were afterwards hung out in iron cages from the lofty tower of 
Lamberti Church, where the cages remain to this day. 



288 WORTH OF RELICS. 

In the Rathhaus, too, are shown John of Ley den's hand, which was 
cut off before his execution ; his carved bedstead, and his wife's shoes ; 
and in the market place a handsome house, ornamented with curious 
carvings, is still exhibited as that in which he lived during the " fitful 
fever " of his sway as " King of the World." 



EXHUMATION OF BODIES. — WORTH OF RELICS. 

There is always something that provokes curiosity when we hear of 
the great of former times being taken up from the grave, especially when 
artificial means have been used to arrest the progress of decay, and the 
form and features of persons of whom we have heard so much are re- 
vealed for a few minutes to men of a modern generation. In 1774 the 
tomb of Edward I. was opened in presence of the Dean of Westminster 
and two Prebendaries. The body was found in a state of complete 
preservation, having on two robes, one of gold and silver tissue, the other 
of crimson velvet. In 1834 the tomb of Henry IV. was opened. The 
countenance was found to be unchanged except in colour ; but, after a 
few minutes' exposure to the air, collapsed. The coffin of Charles I. 
was opened in 18 13 in presence of the Prince Regent ; and the skull of 
Pope was disturbed accidentally some years ago, when a grave was 
being dug in Twickenham churchyard, but it was at once reverently re- 
placed. There is also a disgusting story of a Mr. Thompson, of Wor- 
cester, who baited his angling-hook with part of the corrupted form of 
King John, and carried the fish he caught with it in triumph through 
the streets ! 

In 1867, at the chapel of the Sorbonne, an edifice of considerable pre- 
tension, in Paris, an actual translation was celebrated. The remains of 
Cardinal Richelieu were restored to the splendid mausoleum in which 
they were laid two centuries ago, but from which they were ruthlessly 
torn, to be insulted in the streets, in the great Revolution. In every 
outward circumstance, and in the personages taking part in the cere- 
mony, France did her duty to one 01 her greatest men. There was a 
profusion of crimson velvet, and there were present, we are told, " the 
representatives of the great bodies of the State, high functionaries, Minis- 
ters, members of the learned corporations, deputies from the French 
Academy, which was founded by the great Cardinal-Minister, among 
whom were Berryer, Cousin, Nisard, and others, and many members of 
the University." The remains consisted of a piece of the skull, which 
some good man had rescued from the rabble in 1 793, and had cut in two 
in order to prevent an identification that would have cost his own 
head. 

Innumerable relics, that had at least the sanction of an unknown an- 
tiquity, have perished ignominiously, to have their places filled after- 
wards by the grossest imposture. The question that most forces itself 
on us is not whether any of " the relics " are genuine, but whether it is 
not a simple imprudence to do much for their preservation, even if they 
are. The remains of the Conqueror have been twice outraged, and, 



CREDULITY OF GREAT MINDS. 289 

whatever the Archbishop of Paris may expect, this poor bit of skull, 
which might have been laid quietly in its old place, is put a little in 
danger's way by this imposing act of restitution. Meanwhile, and on 
the most favourable supposition, what is it that the Sorbonne has to 
show its visitors ? It is the fragment of a skull that has been dragged 
fVoin the grave, carried about the streets by a mad rabble, and rescued 
only to be sawn in two by the frightened preserver. After a time, when 
the first superficial excitement of curiosity has passed away, the dis- 
agreeable part of the impression survives, and is always aggravated by 
any circumstances that bear a ludicrous character. Beware of hoarding 
relics, whether public or private, we say to all our readers. Beware of 
making a relic, of investing a senseless thing with a sentimental value, 
and enthroning it in some place from which it cannot easily or de- 
cently be moved. It is but a sort of small idolatry. Thanks to time, 
accident, bad memory, death, fire, war, and occasionally Huguenots or 
Jacobins, there is sometimes a very clean sweep of them. But they 
sometimes accumulate till they bury the victim or the victims of the 
delusion of idle sentiment varied with mischievous imposture. — (Times 
journal.) 

The three great founders and expositors of Methodism have now, we 
learn, been formally canonized, and their relics are being exhibited to 
the admiring faithful. The Rev. Samuel Dunn, happy in the possession 
of these memorials of departed worth, is displaying them to pious con- 
gregations, and the Wesleyan mind is spoken of as being appropriately 
edified. A piece of John Wesley's preaching-gown, two neckcloths 
formerly worn by his brother Charles, and the spectacles, comb, and 
pocket-book of Dr. Adam Clarke, convince the most sceptical that it is 
not at Rome or Moscow alone that the relics of the saints are held in 
veneration and the saints themselves duly worshipped. If we remember 
aright, it is not very long ago that some admirer of John Wesley had 
in his possession a wig, or a portion of a wig, that had been worn by that 
remarkable person ; and there was some controversy as to the genuine- 
ness of the wig itself, or as to the amount of veneration which it was 
supposed to excite. At any rate, it is clear all that is now necessary 
is to prove the pedigree of the interesting relics themselves. For, after 
all, it is just as easy to manufacture sacred gowns, combs, and neckties, 
as those curious little bits of bone which are to be had in Rome, all 
duly authenticated by official signatures and seals. When the pedigree 
is established, and the cavils of the incredulous utterly destroyed, the 
next thing will be to dedicate some chapels to the honour of the saints 
whose remains are thus devoutly preserved; and it might even be desi- 
rable to set apart certain days in the year for their especial remembrance. 
— Abridged from the Pall Mall Gazette. 



CREDULITY OF GREAT MINDS. 

Sir Richard Baker, having described the imposture of Elizabeth 
Barton, " the Holy Maid of Kent," her counterfeit trances and predic- 
tions, says : " Here we may see how credulous ofttimes great scholars 



u 



290 TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 

are in believing impostures, when "Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, were thought to give credit to this 
counterfeit ; so that we need not wonder at St. Austin, who, though he 
gave credit to many lying miracles, yet they were such as had more 
probability in them than this, which consisted in nothing but making 
faces, as, upon examination of the Maid and her abettors, was confessed ; 
and, thereupon, she and most of them were condemned, drawn to 
Tyburn, and there hanged." 

» 

TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 

In Egypt, as we learn from Herodotus, the priesthood taught the 
doctrine of" the passage of the soul, after quitting the body, through a 
succession of forms of beasts, fishes, and birds ; until, after a cycle of 
3000 years, it entered anew into humanity in the body of a new-born 
child. This notion of the entrance of the soul into a new body shows 
that the object of embalming their dead has been misconstrued. It was 
not with the view of the soul re-entering its ancient receptacle that the 
remains of the dead were kept so long from decay, but with the aim of 
delaying as long as possible the transmigration to lower forms, which 
was held only to commence with the dissolution of the corpse. Servius, 
in his commentary on the iEneid, contrasts this tenet with the practice 
of the Romans in burning their dead, in order to accelerate as much as 
possible the freedom of the soul from the body, and its return to " gene- 
rality," its proper nature. The teachings of Pythagoras and Plato 
upon the subject of the transmigration and re-incarnation of souls need 
hardly to be particularized.* Neither need it be pointed out how deeply 
a belief of this kind entered into the popular religion of Greece, through 
the mythical elevation of the heroes among the ranks of the divinities ; 
or how the subtle mysticism of Plotinus handed over to the theosophy 
of the new world a germ from the ancient stock, in the idea of a series 
of purgatorial states in harmony with the moral and spiritual antecedents 
of the soul — Kara dfxoij3as filav. The dogma of pre-existence was 
prominently upheld by the Druids. That souls were thought by them 
to pass on after death to other bodies, Caesar expressly tells us ; aryi 
Lucan, whose mind was steeped in the ancient Gallic ideas, sees in death 
but the intermediate stage of existence. 

M. Pezzani, a French barrister, believes that he has succeeded in 
raising the doctrine of the transmigration of souls from the level of a low 
and dreary superstition to that of a truth of philosophy and an article of 
religious faith ; compiled, he is careful to inform us, in the main, from a 



* With Pythagoras the transmigration of souls was a mere physical event, 
wholly independent of all moral considerations. In proof of the reality of the 
transmigration, Pythagoras pretended that he distinctly remembered the different 
bodies which his soul had inhabited. He recollected being first (Ethalides, and 
then Euphorbus the son of Panthous. To prove this false assertion, he went 
to Argos, and in the temple of Juno pointed out the shield with which he had 
fought in the Trojan war, hanging amidst many others of the same form. He 
next became Hermotimus, a fisherman ; and, last of all, Pythagoras. 



WHO WAS APOLLONIUS OF TYANA? 291 

series of successive essays of his, not less than fifteen in number, extend- 
ing over a period of nearly thirty years. Time and reflection, the pro- 
gress of science and philosophy, and the more critical knowledge of the 
past having in no instance shaken or even seriously modified his original 
convictions.— Saturday Review, 1865. 



WHO WAS APOLLONIUS OF TYANA ? 

The Pagan Christ of the third century, who, two centuries later, was 
set up by Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, as a rival to the 
Christ of the Gospel. 

Apollonius was born at Tyana, a Greek city in Cappadocia, about 
the commencement of the Christian era. At an early age he became 
imbued with the doctrines of the Pythagorean sect, and visited several 
of the principal cities of Asia Minor. He is next reported to have tra- 
velled to Babylon, and to have conversed with the Magians. He then 
proceeded to India, accompanied by his faithful disciple Damis. Philo- 
stratus reports, on his return westwards the fame of his wisdom was 
very widely spread. At Smyrna, he allayed the factious quarrels of the 
citizens, and restored tranquillity. At Ephesus he predicted a pestilence, 
which he is said to have made to cease by destroying an evil spirit who 
appeared in the form of a beggar. At Pergamus he was not less suc- 
cessful, and performed many marvellous cures. At Troy he had an in- 
terview and a long conversation with the ghost of Achilles, and after 
wandering in Greece arrived finally at Rome. By his predictions he 
awakened the fears, but by his miraculous powers escaped the vengeance 
of Nero. However, as the tyrant had decreed the banishment of all 
philosophers from Rome, he thought it more prudent to depart, and 
continued his travels in Spain, Africa, and Egypt. Wherever he went 
he attracted disciples, and by his teaching endeavoured to reform the 
people that he came among. At length he was accused, in the reign of 
Domitian, of practising magic arts, and was imprisoned, but, as it is 
stated, escaped miraculously. Shortly afterwards he is said to have 
died, but to have appeared after death to a young man at Tyana who 
had ventured to disbelieve in the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. 

In 1862, M. Chassang published a new translation of the Life of Apol- 
lonius, originally written in Greek by Philostratus. In the seventeenth 
century anti-Christian controversialists found in his life a whole armoury 
of weapons. But by this time his divinity has vanished, his philosophy 
has been exploded, and we can only find in Apollonius a worker of 
wonders. At one time regarded as the successor of Pythagoras and the 
rival of our Saviour, he now appears to us merely in the light of a pre- 
decessor of Swedenborg. M. l'Abbe Freppel discovers in Apollonius 
a kind of philosophical Don Quixote, who goes through the world in 
search of adventure and combats, and who had in Damis his Sancho 
Panza. 

The conclusion at which M. Chassang arrives is, that, so far as Philo- 
stratus goes, we can only look upon Apollonius as a magician or thau- 

U2 



2 9 2 WE A T IS PANTHEISM ? 

maturge. He seems to regard his biography as an idealized portrait of 
one of the last representatives of the wisdom of antiquity. M. Ghassang 
thinks that the superficial, confused, and incomplete account supplied 
by Philostratus fails to establish the philosophical position of Apollonius. 
Ritter, on the other hand, judging from the state of philosophical opinion 
at the time, and arguing from what slight traces can be detected, be- 
lieves Apollonius to have been a neo-Pythagorean strongly imbued with 
the learning and the superstitions of the East. — Saturday Review. 



WHAT IS PANTHEISM ? 

This momentous inquiry has been answered by the Rev. John Hunt, 
in his Essay on Pantheism, published in 1866. This treatise is valuable 
as an introduction to the study of his great subject : it has been described 
as introductory to the final chapter, " What is Pantheism ?" — Brah- 
manism and Buddhism, the Persian, Egyptian, and Greek religions, 
Greek philosophy, the philosophy of the Jews, the Church, the Gnos- 
tics, Manichasism, Scholasticism, the Italian revival, the German, French, 
and English mystics, Sufism,Des Cartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibnitz, 
the German transcendental philosophers, and the Pantheism of the poets, 
all come under review before the author arrives at his proper theme. 

Excluding material Pantheism, or, in other words, Atheism, from the 
view (says a critic in the Athenaeum), the author treats of spiritual 
Pantheism, which, as he rightly supposes, enters into all religions and 
philosophies worthy of the name. There is a sense in which the most 
religious men and the profoundest metaphysicians are Pantheists, — in 
which both St. John and St. Paul have been called so. Mr. Hunt's 
mind sympathizes with this. He feels that the more it is studied the 
more it brings a man into that close union with the Infinite which the 
human soul longs for in its highest moods. But he is aware that the 
word has been employed as a symbol of the grossest heresy and impiety, 
— that it has been fastened upon others by their opponents as a sign of 
opprobrium, — and that the odour of it has been thoroughly bad among 
the ignorant or bigoted. Indeed, men of opposite opinions and feelings 
have been termed Pantheists — the devout Bunsen and the strong-minded 
Carlyle, the poet Wordsworth no less than Shelley. In the interests of 
charity as well as of truth it is a duty to ascribe only spiritual Pantheism 
to men like Spinoza and Malebranche, unless their own writings show 
clearly that they meant otherwise. 

" Pantheism/' says Mr. Hunt, "is, on all hands, acknowledged to be the 
theology of reason — of reason it may be in its impotence, but still of 
such reason as man is gifted with in this present life. It is the philo- 
sophy of religion — the philosophy of all religions. It is the goal of 
Rationalism, of Protestantism, and of Catholicism, for it is the goal of 
thought. There is no resting-place but by ceasing to think or reason on 
God and things divine. Individuals may stop at the symbol, churches 
and sects may strive to make resting-places on the way by appealing to 
the authority of a church, to the letter of the Sacred Writings, or by 



V/HAT IS MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY? 293 

trying to fix the 'limits' of religious thought, when God Himself has 
not fixed them. But the reason of man in its inevitable development and 
its divine love of freedom will break all such bonds and cast away all 
such cords. They are but the inventions of men, and the human soul in 
its progess onwards will hold them in derision. It knows that God is 
Infinite, and only as the Infinite will it acknowledge Him to be God. 
But what is Pantheism ? Substantially and primarily, Pantheism is the 
effort of man to know God as Being, infinite and absolute. It is onto- 
logical Theism — another, a necessary and an implied form of rational 
Theism. ^ The argument from teleology proves a God at work; the ar- 
gument from ontology proves a God infinite. We cannot take the one 
without the other, whatever may be our difficulties in reconciling the 
conclusions to which each leads us. The difficulties arise from the vast- 
ness of the subject ,- and, though we cannot see further than we do see, 
that is no reason for shutting our eyes to what is manifest." 



WHAT IS MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY? 

Some clever wag or wags, after the study of Professor Kingsley's 
novels and essays, and possibly of his sermons also, gathered from them 
a presentment of Mr. Kingsley's ideal hero and saint, and named him 
" Muscular Christian." Mr. Brown closes his lecture on " Wesley's 
Theology," with a demand for a "Christianity muscular, — morally 
muscular, gigantic in its moral strength." He tells us that he does not 
desire to have it " in Kingsley's puerile sense," but in some Wesleyan 
Methodist sense. He here only expresses the general opinion of the 
reading world that Mr. Kingsley is responsible, in some degree or other, 
for this singular new term. It is, at least, a witty description (with some 
dash of parody) of his heroes. 

Mr. Kingsley confesses that he had this term in mind when he chose 
David as the subject of his four sermons before the University of Cam- 
bridge. " We have heard much of late," he says in the beginning of 
his first sermon, "about muscular Christianity. A clever expression, 
spoken in jest by I know not whom, has been bandied about the world, 
and supposed by many to represent some new ideal of the Christian cha- 
racter. For myself I do not understand what it means. It may mean 
one of two things. If it mean the first, it is a term somewhat unneces- 
sary, if not somewhat irreverent. If it means the second, it means some- 
thing untrue and immoral." The first meaning may be " a healthful 
and manly Christianity, one which does not exalt the feminine virtues to 
the exclusion of the masculine." This is the good meaning. The other is 
expressed thus by Mr. Kingsley. " There are those who say, and there 
have been of late those who have written books to show, that provided 
a young man is sufficiently frank, brave, and gallant, he is more or less 
absolved from the common duties of morality and self-restraint." This 
is, of course, the evil meaning.— Review in the Churchman, 1865. 



-94 



PROPHECY-RIDDEN PRINCES. 



PROPHECY- RIDDEN PRINCES. 

In Pagan times, it has been asserted that popular superstitions blended 
themselves with the highest political functions, gave a sanction to 
national counsels, and oftentimes gave the starting-point to the very- 
primary movements of the State. Prophecies, omens, miracles, all 
worked concurrently with senates or princes. " Whereas, in our days," 
says Charles Lamb, " the witch who takes her pleasure with the Moor, 
and summons Beelzebub to her sabbaths, nevertheless trembles before 
the beadle, and hides herself from the overseer." Now, as to the witch, 
even the horrid Canidia of Horace, or the more dreadful Erichtho of 
Lucan, seems hardly to have been much respected in any era. But for 
the other mode of the supernatural, they have entered into more fre- 
quent combinations with state functions and state movements in our 
modern ages than in the classical age of Paganism. Look at prophecies, 
for example: the Romans had a few obscure oracles afloat, and they 
had the Sibylline books under the state seal. These books, in fact, had 
been kept so long, that, like port wine superannuated, they had lost 
their flavour and body. On the other hand, look at France. Henry, 
the historian, speaking of the fifteenth century, describes it as a national 
infirmity of the English to be prophecy-ridden. Perhaps there never 
was any foundation for this as an exclusive remark, but assuredly not 
in the next century. There had been with us British, from the twelfth 
century, Thomas of Ercildoune in the north, and many monkish local 
prophets for every part of the island ; but latterly England had no 
terrific prophet, unless indeed Nixon of the Vale Royal in Cheshire, 
who uttered his dark oracles sometimes with a merely Cestrian, some- 
times with a national reference. Whereas, in France, throughout the 
sixteenth century, every principal event was foretold successively, with 
an accuracy that still shocks and confounds us. Francis I., who opens 
the century (and by many is held to open the book of modern history, 
as distinguished from the middle or feudal history), had the battle of 
Pavia foreshown to him, not by name, but in its results — by his own 
Spanish captivity — by the exchange for his own children upon a frontier 
river of Spain — finally, by his own disgraceful death, through an 
infamous disease conveyed to him under a deadly circuit of revenge. 
This king's son, Henry II., read some years before the event a descrip- 
tion of that tournament, on the marriage of the Scottish Queen with his 
eldest son, Francis II., which proved fatal to himself, through the 
awkwardness of the Comte de Montgomery and his own obstinacy. 
After this, and we believe a little after the brief reign of Francis II.. 
arose Nostradamus, the great prophet of the age. All the children of 
Henry II- and of Catharine de Medici, one after the other, died in cir- 
cumstances of suffering and horror, and Nostradamus pursued the 
whole with ominous allusions. Charles IX., though the authorizer of 
the Bartholomew massacre, was the least guilty of his party, and the 
only one who manifested a dreadful remorse. Henry III., the last of 
the brothers, died, as the reader will remember, by assassination. And 



LUTHER AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 295 

all these tragic successions of events are still to be read more or less 
dimly prefigured in verses of which we will not here discuss the dates. 
Suffice it, that many authentic historians attest the good faith of the 
prophets ; and finally, with respect to the first of the Bourbon dynasty, 
Henry IV., who succeeded upon the assassination of his brother-in-law,' 
we have the peremptory assurance of Sully and other Protestants] 
countersigned by writers both historical and controversial, that not only 
was he prepared, by many warnings, for his own tragical death — not 
only was the day, the hour, prefixed — not only was an almanack sent to 
him, in which the bloody summer's day of 16 10 was pointed out to his 
attention in bloody colours ; but the mere record of the king's last 
afternoon shows beyond a doubt the extent and the punctual limitation 
of his anxieties. In fact, it is to this attitude of listening expectation in 
the king, and breathless waiting for the blow, that Schiller alludes in 
that fine speech of Wallenstein to his sister, where he notices the funeral 
knells that sounded continually in Henry's ears, and, above all, his pro- 
phetic instinct, that caught the sound from a far distance of his mur- 
derer's motions, and could distinguish, amidst all the tumult of a mighty 
capital, his stealthy steps. — Blackwood's Magazine. 



THE REFORMATION — LUTHER AND TRANSUBSTAN- 
TIATION. 

In the progress of the Reformation Luther himself, but for one 
doctrine, which had become the very life and soul of the man, would have 
been persuaded or alarmed into an accommodation with the Church of 
Rome. There was one period in the negotiations between the two 
parties, when, by mutual concessions, a compromise appeared possible, 
if Luther could but have relinquished his doctrine of "justification by 
faith alone." Writing of the great German reformer, Mr. White says 
in Eighteen Christian Centuries: — " Hungering after better things than the 
works of the law — abstinence, prayers, repetitions, scourgings, and all the 
wearisome routine of mechanical devotion — he dashed boldly into the other 
extreme, and preached free grace— grace without merit, the great doc- 
trine which is called, theologically, 'justification by faith alone.'" This 
other extreme was the sheet-anchor of the Reformation. And it is 
curious to notice that a doctrine on which Protestants are now divided, 
was precisely the doctrine which irrevocably separated the Reformed 
Churches, in the first instance, from the great Catholic hierarchy. So 
far as the Reformation depended upon Luther and his faithful disciples, 
it was the only vital point on which no compromise was possible. The 
doctrine of transubstantiation, which to the Protestants of a later period 
seemed the most astounding error of the ancient Church, was main- 
tained to thejastby Luther. Some slight modification he may have 
made, which is indicated in controversial language by the substitution 
of the term consubstantiation ; but if Luther could have kept his dis- 
ciples upon that line at which he himself rested, there would have been 
no incurable schism on this head. D'Aubigne gives us a most spirited 



296 FABLES ABOUT LUTHER. 

and graphic account of the conference held upon this subject before the 
Landgrave at Marburg, between the Swiss reformer Zuinglius and Mar- 
tin Luther. Luther was supported by Melancthon, Zuinglius by 
(Ecolampadius. The Landgrave sat behind a table ; " Luther, taking 
a piece of chalk, bent over the velvet cloth which covered it, and steadily 
wrote four words in large characters. All eyes followed the movement 
of his hand, and soon they read, Hoc est Corpus Meum. Luther wished 
to have this declaration continually before him, that it might strengthen 
his own faith, and be a sign to his adversaries." And no Catholic could 
have adhered more pertinaciously to the literal meaning of his text. " I 
differ, and shall always differ," he exclaimed. " Christ hath said, This is 
my body. Let them show me that a body is not a body. I reject reason, 
common sense, carnal arguments, and mathematical proofs. We have 
the word of God. This is my body" he repeated, pointing with his 
finger to the words he had written ; " the devil himself shall not 
drive me from that. To seek to understand it is to fall away from the 
faith." Zuinglius objected that Christ's body had ascended into heaven ; 
and if in Heaven, it is not in the bread. Luther replied, " I repeat that 
I have nothing to do with mathematical proofs. I will not, when Christ's 
body is in question, hear speak of a particular place. I absolutely will 
not. Christ's body is in the sacrament, but it is not there as in a place." 
Then, no longer content with pointing his finger at the text he had 
written, he seized the velvet cover, tore it off the table, and held it up 
to the eyes of Zuinglius and (Ecolampadius. " See ! see !" he said, " this 
is our text ; you have not yet driven us from it, and we care for no 
other proof." 

Happily it is not one mind, however energetic, that can arrest or de- 
termine a movement like that of the Reformation. It ran its destined 
course. And now, looking round upon the nations of Europe, we may 
assuredly congratulate those countries in which, owing to favourable 
circumstances, the doctrines of the Reformed Church were able freely 
to develope themselves. There is no room for doubt or cavil on this 
head. It is not a question of subtle or disputable tenets. There is this 
broad matter-of-fact distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism, 
— the one is the religion of the book, the other of the Priest. In the 
one, every peasant consults his Bible as his sacred oracle ; in the other, 
the Priest is his sacred oracle. — Blackwood's Magazine, 



FABLES ABOUT LUTHER. 

Dr. Forbes Winslow having indulged in some theories on the subject 
of Luther's supposed vision of spirits, as when he is said to have thrown 
the inkstand at the devil in the Wartburg, he has been replied to by- 
Mr. C. H. Collette, as follows : "I am sure if Luther were alive he 
would be much obliged to Dr. Forbes Winslow for his elaborate ' psy- 
chological' disquisition on his case ; but he would have, as I now pro- 
pose to do, pointed out a much more simple solution of the difficulty. 
The fact is, Luther not only never had the privilege of an interview 



PORTRAIT OF MOHAMMED. 297 

with his Satanic Majesty, but he never said that he had. The story is 
one of the many hoaxes got up to bring ridicule not only on the ' great 
reformer' himself, but on the great work in which he was privileged to 
be a conspicuous and efficient actor. The alleged interview with the 
devil is one of the numerous perversions of Luther's writings after he was 
dead. The portion of Luther's writings (see vol. vii. p. 228, edit. Wit- 
temb. 1557) upon which the traditionary tale of his interview with the 
devil is built, has been long since most completely exposed. The matter 
was decisively set at rest by Seckendorf, a Lutheran writer, who proved 
that one Justus Jonas, formerly a colleague in divinity of Luther, trans- 
lated this piece of Luther's writings from the German into Latin, but 
garbled the text in many places, and left out these words, ' Meo corde ; 
multas enim noctes mihi acerbas et molestas fecit,' which ought imme- 
diately to follow the first sentence, ' Satan mecum caspit ejusmodi dispu- 
tationem ;' so that the passage would run thus, « Satan began with me, in 
my heart, the following disputation.' (See Seckendorf's Comment arius 
de'Lutheranismo, etc., lib. i. sec. cii. Lips. 1694)." 



PORTRAIT OF MOHAMMED. 

Dr. Arnold has drawn the following very interesting description of 
Mohammed's personal appearance and habits : 

Mohammed is said to have been of middle stature ; to have had a 
large head, strong beard, round face, and reddish-brown cheeks. His 
biographers state that his forehead was high, his mouth wide, his nose 
long and somewhat of an aquiline shape ; that he had large black eyes ; 
that a vein which extended from his forehead to his eyebrows enlarged 
when excited by anger ; that his splendidly white teeth stood far apart ; 
and upon his lower lip was a small mole. His hair hanging over his 
shoulders retained its dark colour to the day of his death : he sometimes 
dyed it brown, but more frequently applied to it odoriferous oils. It 
was only at his last pilgrimage that he had his head shaven. He trimmed 
his moustache and his finger-nails every Friday before prayer. His 
neck, it is said, " rose like a silver bar upon his broad chest." Between 
his shoulders he had a large mole, which was looked upon as the pro- 
phetic seal. A physician once wishing to remove it, Mohammed ob- 
jected, saying, " He who made it shall also heal it." His hands and 
feet were very large, yet his step was so light as " to leave no mark on 
the sand." Mohammed spoke but little, yet occasionally permitted 
himself a joke. A woman once came to him, saying, " My husband is 
ill, and begs thee to visit him;" upon which he inquired, " Has not thy 
husband something white in his eye ?" She returned in order to ex- 
amine it. On her husband asking what she was doing, she replied: " I 
must see whether you have anything white in your eye, for the Apostle of 
God asked the question." Her husband at once recognising the joke, 
convinced her that this was common to all eyes. On one occasion, 
when an old woman conjured him to pray for her that she might enter 
paradise, he replied: "No old woman dares enter paradise!" As she 



298 HISTORIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

began to weep, he reminded her of the verse in the Koran which de- 
clares that perpetual youth will be restored to women. The Arab 
prophet was compassionate towards animals, and would wipe down his 
horse when it perspired with his sleeve ; but this was nothing extra- 
ordinary among his countrymen. His cat was lifted up to share his 
own dish ; and a white cock which he had he called his friend, consider- 
ing him a protection against devils, genii, witchcraft, and the evil eye ! 



ORIGIN OF KISSING THE POPE'S TOE, AND OF THE 

LATERAN. 

Some questions had been raised as to the propriety of Kissing the 
Pope's toe, and even theologians had their doubts touching so singular 
a ceremony. But this difficulty has been set at rest by Matthew of 
Westminster, who explains the true origin of this custom. He says 
that formerly it was usual to kiss the hand of his holiness ; but that towards 
the end of the eighth century, a certain lewd woman, in making an 
offering to the Pope, not only kissed his hand but also pressed it. The 
Pope — his name was Leo, — seeing the danger, cut off his hand, and thus 
escaped the contamination to which he had been exposed. Since that 
time, the precaution has been taken of kissing the Pope's toe, instead of 
his hand ; and lest any one should doubt the accuracy of this account, 
the historian assures us that the hand, which had been cut off five or 
six hundred years before, still existed in Rome, and was indeed a stand- 
ing miracle, since it was preserved in the Lateran in its original state, 
free from corruption. 

And as some readers might wish to be informed respecting the La- 
teran itself, where the hand was kept, this also is considered by the his- 
torian, in another part of his great work, where he traces it back to the 
Emperor Nero. For it is said that this wicked persecutor of the faith, 
on one occasion, vomited a frog covered with blood, which he believed 
to be his own progeny, and, therefore, caused to be shut up in a vault, 
where it remained hidden for some time. Now, in the Latin language, 
latente means hidden, and rana means a frog ; so that, by putting these 
two words together, we have the origin of the Lateran, which, in fact, 
was built where the frog was found. — Buckle's Hist. Civilization, vol. ii. 
p. 291. 

THE HISTORIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

Certain Episcopal writers are prone to boast of their Churchmanship 
by hurling anathemas against sects. The historic Church of England, 
it is maintained, is not of this type. The late accomplished author of 
the Christian Tear admits, in his edition of Hooker's works, that " num- 
bers have been admitted to the ministry of the Church of England with 
no better than Presbyterial ordination ;" and that " neither Hooker, nor 
Jewel, nor Whitgift ventured to urge the exclusive claims of episcopacy ." 



HISTORIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 299 



Hooker writes :— « There may sometimes be very just and sufficient 
reason to allow ordination made without a bishop. Therefore we are 
not simply without exception to urge a lineal descent of power from 
the Apostles by continual succession of Bishops in every effectual 
ordination." 

" Let the Bishops bear in mind that it is more by the force of custom 
than by any true and heavenly law that the Lord hath appointed Pres- 
byters to be under Bishops." « There may be just and sufficient reason 
to allow ordination without a Bishop." 

Warburton writes:— "The great Hooker was not only against but 
laid aown principles that have entirely subverted, all pretences to a 
Divine unalterable right in any Church government whatever." 

Bishop Cosens says :— " Are all the Churches of Denmark, Germany 
France, and Scotland, in all points, either of substance or circumstance 
disciplmated alike ? They neither are nor can be, nor yet need be' 
since it cannot be proved that any set and exact particular form is 
recommended to us by the Word of God." 

Francis Mason, an enthusiastic and able Anglican champion writes • 
—"Seeing a Presbyter is equal to a Bishop in the power of order he 
hath equally intrinsic power to give orders." 

Whitgift.— " I deny that the Scripture hath set down any one certain 
form and kind of government in the Church." 

Stillingfleet.— " The ground for settling episcopal government in this 
nation was not any pretence of Divine right, but the conveniency of 
that form to the state and condition of this Church at the time of the 
Reformation." 

Bishop Hall.—" There is no difference in any essential matter between 
the Church of England and her sisters of the Reformation." 

Archbishop Bramhall.— " Because I esteem the other Reformed 
Churches as not completely formed, do I esteem them aliens and 
strangers and schismatics ? No such thing/' 

Archbishop Usher.—" I do profess that with like affection I would 
receive the blessed Sacrament at the hands of the Dutch and French 
ministers." 

Archbishop Wake.—" I should be unwilling to affirm that where the 
ministry is not episcopal there is no Church, norany true administration 
ot the Sacraments." 

Bishop Tomline.—" There is no precept in the New Testament which 
commands that every Church shall be governed by Bishops." 

Bishop Jewel.—" By the Scriptures a Bishop and a Priest are all 

one. Verily, Chrysostom saith, "Inter episcopum et presbyterum 

'"rcsbler 6 ™ "^ AugUStine saith ' ' Qii id est episcopus nisi primus 

Dean Sherlock.—" A Church may be a truly Catholic Church, and 

such as we may and ought to communicate with, without Bishops." 

Dr. Claget.— " The Church of England does not unchurch those parts 
ot Christendom that hold the unity of the faith. Hence the folly of the 
conceit that there must be one Church, which is the only Church, to 
the exclusion of all the rest." 



300 BURNING OF VEDAS WIDOWS. 

A far greater number of authorities could be added ; but the above 
must satisfy the impartial reader that the great luminaries of the Church 
of England had no sympathy with arrogant and intolerant pretensions 
of Episcopacy. — Communication to the Times. 



BURNING OF VEDAS WIDOWS. 

The burning of these poor women appears to have been in violation 
of authority — in plain words, to have been a mistake. Professor Wilson, 
in a lecture on the Vedas, notices some remarkable passages in the 
Rigveda upon this subject ; and, among the rest, the hymn cited as 
authority for the burning of widows. The opinions which he had then 
formed upon a cursory view of the subject, have been fully confirmed 
by an examination of the various passages on the subject, and his con- 
clusions are, that the text usually cited as authority for the burning of 
widows enjoins the very contrary, and directs them to remain in the 
world ; and that although the expressions relating to the disposal of the 
dead are somewhat equivocal, yet it seems probable that the corpse was 
burned, although the ashes and bones were afterwards buried. After 
giving a translation of the hymn in which the practice is said to be 
enjoined, he proceeds to show the origin of the error, or wilful mis- 
apprehension, which arose from reading the word agneh, instead of the 
real word agre, thereby changing the sentence, — "let them go up into 
the dwelling first," into " let them go up into the place of the fire." The 
reading agre is confirmed by the commentator; and the translation 
made by Professor Wilson agrees, in all essential respects, with another 
made by Dr. Max Miiller. Aswalayana, the author of the Grihya 
Sutras, a work little inferior in authority to the Vedas, furnishes further 
proof of what is meant, as he defines the person who is to lead the 
widow away after the performance of the funeral rites. As regards the 
disposal of the dead, the phraseology is more in favour of burying than 
burning ; but it is possible that the burying may refer to the ashes and 
bones after burning, — a practice analogous to that of other ancient 
nations, and which may account for the stone coffins found in many 
parts of India having cinders or burnt human remains within them. 
The funeral ceremonies, as prescribed by the Grihya Sutras, differ in 
many respects from those now observed. A law permitting the re- 
marriage of Hindoo widows has, however, been passed, and carried 
into effect in Bengal. Anybody may marry a widow without fear of 
consequences. This result is admitted by the most bigoted opponents 
of the reform, so there is an end of one of the oldest social evils that 
ever afflicted a community. 



3oi 



|jWri.butiixc Jfusfice. 




T has been often remarked that a kind of poetical justice has 
been manifested in the Nemesis which has overtaken those 
persons who have devised modes of punishment, torture, or 
death for their fellow-creatures. The Scriptures assure us that 
" an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," will be exacted ; " that all 
they who take the sword shall perish with the sword ;" and that "what- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap ;" they afford us, moreover, 
an illustration in the case of "the wicked Haman," who expiated his 
enmity to the Jewish people on the " gallows, fifty cubits high, which 
he had made for Mordecai." 

In profane history, will at once suggest itself the Brazen Bull, which 
Phalaris, the despot of Agrigentum, had constructed for roasting alive 
his own subjects. This piece of mechanism was hollow, to contain one 
or more victims enclosed in it, to perish in tortures when the metal was 
heated : the cries of these suffering prisoners' passing for the roarings of 
the animal. The artist who constructed the Bull was named Perillus, 
and is said to have been the first person burnt in the bull by order of the 
despot. The reality of this ingenious torture appears to be better au- 
thenticated than the nature of the story would lead us to presume ; for 
it is not only noticed by Pindar, but even the actual instrument — the 
Brazen Bull itself — which had been taken away from Agrigentum as a 
trophy by the Carthaginians, was returned by the Romans, on the sub- 
jugation of Carthage, to its original place of deposit. 

Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, it is asserted, was crushed to death 
in a metallic collapsible prison of his own invention ; and a tale founded 
upon it entitled " the Iron Shroud," will be found in Blackwood 's Ma- 
gazine, vol. xxviii. History tells us that Ludovico died imprisoned in 
the castle of Loches, in France : the " collapsible prison " is an embel- 
lishment. 

A fatality seems to have pursued the men by whom the Bastile was 
raised. It was founded by Stephen Marcel, Provost of the Merchants: 
in attempting to save himself by flight, he was struck on the head by an 
axe, by De Charny, and he fell at the foot of the Bastile, which he 
himself had built. Hugues Aubriot, who added to the Bastile, for his 
vigilance as Provost of Paris, was imprisoned therein before he was con- 
signed to the oubliettes. 

The Bishop of Verdun was the inventor of the iron cages in the time 
of Louis XI. of France, and he himself became the very first tenant, 
being shut up in his own invention for eleven years. 

The poisoner Sainte-Croix, as is well known, having inadvertently let 
fall the precautionary glass mask which he was in the habit of wearing, 
lost his life through the noxious fumes of the destructive preparation he 
was compounding ; and in his sudden fate was involved that of the par- 
ticipator in his crimes, his pupil and mistress, De Brinvillieis. 



302 RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 

Another instance of death by poison is that of the infamous monster 
Pope Alexander VI. He once meditated taking off one of the richest 
of the cardinals by poison ; his intended victim, however, contrived, by 
means of presents, promises, and prayers, to gain over the head cook, 
and the dish which had been prepared for the cardinal was placed before 
the pope. He died of the poison he had prepared for another." — Ranke, 
History of the Popes, vol. i. p. 52. 

This was a case of the — 

Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor : thus even-handed Justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice 
To our own lips. 

Macbeth, act i. sc. 7. 

Voltaire throws discredit upon this legend, of which he gives a some- 
what different version, Essat sur les Mceurs, chap. cxi. 

Our own history affords the next example of retributive death. 
Richard Cceur de Lion died of a wound received from a crossbow, 
while besieging a small castle in France. He met his death by a weapon 
introduced into warfare by himself, much to the displeasure of the war- 
riors of his time, who said that " heretofore brave men fought hand to 
hand, but now the bravest and noblest might be brought down by a 
cowardly knave lurking behind a tree." 

Hopkins, the witchfinder, — 

Who after prov'd himself a witch, 
And made a rod for his own breech, — 

went on searching and swimming the poor creatures till some gentleman, 
out of indignation at the barbarity, took him and tied his own thumbs 
and toes, as he used to tie others, and when he was put into the water, 
he himself swam as they did. This cleared the country of him, and it 
was a great deal of pity that they did not think of the experiment sooner. 

Deacon Brodie was executed in 1788 at Edinburgh, for robbery 
of the Excise Office ; the machine by^which the law was carried into 
effect was the invention or improvement of the patient himself; thus, to 
the fact that Deacon Brodie suffered by his own improved drop, com- 
mon fame has added the embellishment that he was the first to prove its 
efficiency. However this latter point may be, in its efficiency he seems 
to have taken a most paternal interest. He found the rope too short, 
descended till it was made longer, ascended again, and found it still too 
short ; when he once more stepped lightly down, and waited till it was 
made somewhat longer. Being at length satisfied, he reascended, helped 
the executioner to adjust the rope, shook hands with a bystander, whom 
he desired to acquaint his friends that he died like a man, and went care- 
lessly out of the world, with his hand slung in the breast of his vest. 

Towards the latter end of the sixteenth century, an attempt was made 
by the Regent, James Earl of Morton, to introduce into Scotland the 
Mannaja, Mannaye, or Halifax Gibbet, as an instrument of judicial exe- 
cution j it was by this that he lost his own head. Sir Walter Scott in- 



RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 303 



forms us that it was remarked with interest by the common people, that 
he suffered decapitation by a rude guillotine of the period which he'him- 
self, during his administration, had introduced into Scotland from 
Halifax ; it was called the " Maiden." {History of Scotland, vol. ii. 
p. 168.) Hone gives the favourite "embellishment" added by popu- 
lar tradition, that the Regent was the first and last person who suffered 
by it in Scotland. 

So also in an epigram preserved in Kelly's Collection of Proverbs: 
He that invented the Maiden first hanselled it. 
Such, however, is not the fact, for an excerpt from the books of the Trea- 
surer of the City of Edinburgh, "To Andro Gotterson, smith, forgrynd- 
ing of the Madin, v. sh.," is of earlier date than the execution of Morton ; 
and a subsequent entry of five shillings to the same individual, "for 
grynding of the Widow;' testifies to the frequency of its use, and the ap- 
propriate change of name, after the first spouse of the Maiden had 
perished in h<?r fatal embrace. It seems too, as is gathered from the same 
paper, to have been the custom to give, when possible, a retributive sig- 
nificance to the mode of its working : " By a quaint regulation, highly 
characteristic of our ancestors, when a cow or horse was the piece of 
property stolen, the animal was caused, by means of a rope, to pull the 
trigger, and thus become the proximate executioner of justice upon the 
offender." 

The Earl of Argyle, the last who suffered by this instrument, declared, 
as he pressed his lips upon the block, that it was " the sweetest maiden 
he had ever kissed." 

> There are two obstinate errors in the common history of the Guillo- 
tine, employed to this day in public executions in France. It is said to 
have been invented by Dr. Guillotin, who is stated to have been one of 
the very first that suffered death by its stroke ; but upon reference to 
the biography of Dr. Guillotin we find that, during the French Revolu- 
tion, he merely pointed out the adoption of this machine, which had 
been long known as proper for the infliction of death without giving any 
pain to the sufferer ; and for that reason it was chosen as a kind of 
compromise among the first French revolutionists, many of whom wanted 
to abolish the punishment of death altogether. Unfortunately for Guil- 
lotin, some wags gave his name to the machine of which he was not the 
inventor, and which he had only brought into notice. It is true that 
Guillotin was imprisoned, and nearly fell a victim to the carnage of the 
Revolution ; but he escaped, and after the termination of his political 
career resumed the functions of a physician, and became one of the 
founders of the Academy oi Medicine at Paris. He died May 26, 1814, 
aged seventy-six, after enjoying up to his last moments the esteem of all 
who knew him. It is said that the slanting descent of the hatchet of the 
guillotin, which renders instant decapitation more certain, and conse- 
quently less painful, was an improvement suggested by Louis XVI. him- 
self, who had a great taste for mechanics. 

In no period, perhaps, is retributive fate more clearly to be discerned, 
than in the end which awaited the sanguinary leaders of the Revolution. 



5 04 RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. 



the 



That of Danton may be cited, who, condemned by a decree of the 
irresponsible Extraordinary Tribunal, of which he was the originator, 
exclaimed on the platform : " This time twelve months I proposed that 
infamous tribunal by which we die, and for which I beg pardon of God 
and man." 

It may be added, that it is not alone upon those who compass by ac- 
tive means the injury or destruction of their fellow men, that the sword 
of retributive justice has been supposed to fall. The Eastern saying 
quoted by Damas to the discomfited Beauseant, may be cited as exhibit- 
ing the belief that the imprecations of those who call down the anger of 
heaven upon others, will, like "bread cast upon the waters, return after 
many days " to the utterers themselves : 

Curse away ! 
And let me tell thee, Beauseant, a wise proverb 
The Arabs have — "Curses are like young chickens, 
And still come home to roost." — Bulwer, Lady of Lyons. 

'Tis sport to have the engineer 
Hoist with his own petar. — Hamlet. 

One more proof in conclusion, that, sooner or later — 

Measure for measure must be answered. — Henry VI. 

" Who is there that sadly, yet calmly, reflects upon the fate of the 
First Napoleon — the protracted eating away of the heart, which forced 
quiescence became in one whose life was energetic action, the miserable 
confinement of ' that spirit poured so wildly forth ' within the narrow 
precincts of Longwood— and does not recognise the awful significance 
of the Scriptural warning, ' with what measure ye mete, it shall be 
measured to you again,' in the analogy of this miserable termination of 
the tyrant's career with that of his victim — that ' most unhappy man of 
men,' as Wordsworth apostrophises him in his fine sonnet — that 
brightest of occidental heroes, Toussaint l'Ouverture?" 

Some of these instances have been selected and abridged from Notes 
and Queries, the contributor of which (W. Bates) terms the incidents a 
few of the more definite and striking instances which, whether actual or 
mythic, may serve sufficiently to point the moral of the poet : 

To wrongdoers the revolution of time 
Brings retribution. 

Twelfth Night. 

Or to illustrate the more emphatic Scriptural warning : 

Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein : and he that rolleth a stone, it will 
return upon him.— Prov. xxvi. 27. 






305 



Stmm applies* to i\t |Lrfs. 




PREHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY. 

R^HISTORIC Archaeology is the history of men and things 
that have no history. All over this country and other coun- 
tries of Western Europe — perhaps, indeed, all over the 
world — are scattered vestiges and relics of unknown races 
and times — of races which existed in times before history commenced. 
These relics are of various kinds ; some so common and conspicuous 
as to be familiar objects, like Stonehenge and similar monuments 
on a smaller scale ; some rarer, like the subterranean habitations in 
the Orkneys, and the " Picts' houses " in various parts of Scotland ; 
some doubtful and mysterious, like the instruments fashioned by 
human hands, and yet discovered in connexion with remains thought 
to be older than man. It is certain, however, that in ages more or less 
remote there did exist people of whom, except in the discoveries thus 
brought to light, we have no record. If we wish to know anything of 
their history, we must unravel or compose it from what we can find in 
these relics, and that is the task which Praehistoric Archaeologists have 
proposed to themselves. 

Though the races in question are all praehistoric, they are not all ex- 
tinct. In a certain sense many a living people may be regarded as prae- 
historic down to a certain period of its annals — that is to say, its origin 
and early progress are lost in the night of antiquity, or commemorated 
only in extravagant fables. The Hindoos themselves, for instance, are 
praehistoric. That they were invaders of India, like the Mahommedan 
conquerers after them, and that they dispossessed a more ancient, if not 
an indigenous population, is well known ; but when their migration 
occurred, or how long they had been settled in India when they were 
invaded in turn, nobody can even conjecture. They claim for themselves 
an incredible antiquity ; but of authentic history they have so little as 
to be without any record or even distinct tradition of an event so com- 
paratively recent as the invasion of Alexander the Great. But here 
comes the remarkable part of the story. Old as the Hindoos may be, 
those older races which they dislodged still survive, and in very great 
numbers. A people completely distinct from the Hindoos in physical 
form, manners, and customs may be found in India at the present day. 
They exist in scattered tribes under various denominations, but a late 
census showed that in North- Western and Central India alone they 
numbered between eight and nine millions. Here, then, is a race, largely 
represented, which is certainly older than another race old enough to be 
praehistoric. 

Of all the monuments of praehistoric man, none, as we have said, are 
more conspicuous than the megalithic fabrics usually described as 

x 



306 MAN UPON THE EARTH. 

Druidical circles. They exist in many parts of these islands, and are 
very commonly known and talked about. Now, who raised these mo- 
numents ? Who set up these stones in these places ? The work is 
usually ascribed to the Celtic races ; but there were certainly races 
earlier than the Celts in these parts, and Stonehenge may possibly be 
even older than we imagine. But, however this may be, Dr. Hooker 
stated at the Meeting of the British Association, in August, 1868,* on 
the authority of his own personal knowledge and observation, that a 
race practising these very customs survives to this very day. In a 
certain district of Eastern Bengal a people may be found who in this 
our own age still raise monuments of this identical character. Dr. 
Hooker has lived with these people. He has seen with his own eyes 
"cromlechs" and " dolmens" not six months old. He was told how 
the stones were cut from the rock, how they were moved from place 
to place, why they were set up, and what the erection signified ; so 
that any enterprising traveller may go and see " Druids " actually at 
work in our own generation upon precisely such monuments as in this 
country are altogether and hopelessly prehistoric. Of course the 
suggestion is that these living specimens of a race lost in antiquity may 
give us, or be insensibly made to yield, some information which may 
stand in the light of history. They actually call a stone, Dr. Hooker 
tells us, by the same name as is given to it in the Celtic idioms of Wales 
and Brittany, though of their language generally little is yet known. 
Such is the curious prospect now opened to us. Races prashistoric in 
these islands are not prSelnStoric in other parts of the world. There are 
countries in which tombs and places of worship are still built after the 
fashion of Stonehenge. Perhaps there are tribes still using exactly such 
knives and arrow-heads as are found in the " drift." At any rate, the 
idea of attacking the subject from this end is singularly practical, and 
the result, perhaps, may give an unexpected character of exactness to 
this last-born of sciences. — Times journal. 



MAN UPON THE EARTH. 

In October, i860, there appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, a search- 
ing examination of this great question, entitled, " The Reputed Traces 
of Primaeval Man," in which, having discussed the leading topics, the 
writer thus recapitulates his conclusions : — 



* During this Meeting, at Norwich, assembled the International Congress of 
Praehistoric Archaeology, which originated at Spezzia in 1865. The subjects 
discussed by the savans included — 1, the earliest traces of the existence of man ; 
2, researches in caverns inhabited at a remote period by man ; 3, the structural 
character of primeval man ; 4, the character of the Fauna associated with him ; 
5, megalithic monuments ; 6, stone and bronze antiquities, their character and 
use ; 7, earliest use of iron in Britain ; 8, early habitations ; 9, intrenchments 
and implements of war ; 10, early methods of interment : 11, existing customs 
and implements, as illustrations of praehistoric times ; 12, indications of con- 
tinuous progress in arts and civilization during successive praehistoric periods. 



GEOLOGY AND HISTORY. 307 

1. To the question, Are the so-called flint implements of human 
workmanship or the results of physical agencies ? My reply is, They 
bear unmistakeably the indications of having been shaped by the skill of 
man, 

2. To the inquiry, Does the mere association in the same deposit of 
the flint-implements and the bones of extinct quadrupeds prove that the 
artificers of the flint-tools and the animals coexisted in time? I 
answer, That mere juxtaposition of itself is no evidence of contempo- 
raneity' and that upon the testimony of the fossil bones the age of the 
human relics is not proven. 

3. To the query, What is the antiquity of the Mammalian bones 
with which the flint-implements are associated ? My answer is, That, 
apart from their mixture with the recently-discovered vestiges of an 
early race of men, these fossils exhibit no independent marks by which 
we can relate them to human time at all. The age of the Diluvium 
which embeds the remains of the extinct mammalian animals must now 
be viewed as doubly uncertain — doubtful from the uncertainty of its 
coincidence with the age of the flint-implements— and again doubtful, 
if even this coincidence were established, from the absence of any link 
of connexion between those earliest traces of man and his historic ages. 

Upon the special question involved in this general query, What time 
must it have required for the physical geography adapted to the Pachy- 
derms of the antediluvian period to have altered into that now prevailing, 
suited to wholly different races ? the geological world is divided between 
two schools of interpretation— the Tranquillists, who recognise chiefly 
Nature's gentler forces and slower mutations, and the Paroxysmists, 
who appeal to her violent subterranean energies and her more active 
surface-changes. 

4. To the last interrogation, How far are we entitled to impute a 
high antiquity to these earliest physical records of mankind from the 
nature of the containing and overlying sedimentary deposits ? My 
response again is, That as the two schools of geologists now named 
differ widely in their translation into geologic time of all phenomena of 
the kind here described, this question, like the preceding, does not 
admit, in the present state of the science, of a specific or quantitative 
answer. 

In conclusion, then, of the whole inquiry, condensing into one expres- 
sion my answer to the general question, Whether a remote prehistoric 
antiquity for the human race has been established from the recent dis- 
covery of specimens of man's handiwork in the so-called Diluvium, I 
maintain it is not proven, by no means asserting that it can be disproved, 
but insisting simply that it remains— Not Proven. 



GEOLOGY AND HISTORY. 

Professor von Cotta has published an interesting work, in which he 
specially devotes himself to the condition of the Earth and of Man during 
the times that have preceded history. He does not pretend, however, 

x 2 



308 WHO ARE THE IMPROVERS OF MANKIND? 

to mark the precise period at which man first appeared on the earth. 
The relative position of rocks are to the geologist what ancient monu- 
ments are to the historian ; but in the case of both, the earlier periods 
are involved in obscurity. History, however, can measure time by 
years ; geology can only assign an earlier or a later place in a series. 
One stratum may be certainly older than another, but how long a period 
was required for the formation of either it may be impossible to deter- 
mine ; and if it were even possible to ascertain this, there are breaks in 
the series which cannot be measured. It may, however, be found, as 
has been suggested, that climatal conditions of the earth's surface, and 
the formation of sedimentary deposits, are related to periodical changes 
in the excentricity of the earth's orbit, in connexion with the precession 
of the equinoxes. 

Admiral Fitzroy adduces the following striking facts strongly bearing 
on the great geological inquiry of " Flint Tools," and " Implements in 
the Drift." 

In 1830 four of the aborigines of Tierra del Fuego were brought to 
England; they acquired enough of our language to talk about common 
things. From their information and our own sight are the following 
facts :— The natives of Tierra del Fuego use stone tools, flint knives, 
arrow and spear heads of flint or volcanic glass, for cutting bark for 
canoes, flesh, blubber, sinews, and spears, knocking shell-fish off rocks, 
breaking large shells, killing guanacoes (in time of deep snow), and for 
weapons. In every sheltered cove where wigwams are placed, heaps of 
refuse — shells and stones, offal and bones — are invariably found. Often 
they appear very old, being covered deeply with wind-driven sand, or 
water-washed soil, on which there is a growth of vegetation. These 
are like the "kitchen middens" of the so-called "Stone Age" in 
Scandinavia. 

No human bones would be found in them (unless dogs had dragged 
some there), because the dead bodies are sunk in deep water with large 
stones, or burnt. These heaps are from six to ten feet high, and from 
ten or twenty to more than fifty yards in length. All savages in the 
present day use stone tools, not only in Tierra del Fuego, but in 
Australia, Polynesia, Northernmost America, and Arctic Asia. In any 
former ages of the world, wherever savages spread, as radiating from 
some centre, similar habits and means of existence must have been 
prevalent ; therefore casual discovery of such traces of human migration, 
buried in or under masses of water-moved detritus, may seem scarcely 
sufficient to define a so-called " Stone Age." 



WHO ARE THE IMPROVERS OF MANKIND ? 

It is strange to find one of the silken barons of civilization and re- 
finement writing as follows: — The polite Earl of Chesterfield says, 
" I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for 
humanity in general ; one would think by them that the whole human 
species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and 






SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION. 309 



dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of emperors 
kings, popes, generals, and ministers." 

Sir Humphry Davy has written thus plainly in the same vein : " In 
the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general 
almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in 
their dynasties ; and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, 
chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate entirely from 
different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature. Governments 
depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion of the 
people and the spirit of the age and nation. It sometimes happens that 
a gigantic mmd possesses supreme power, and rises superior to the age in 
which he is born : such was Alfred in England, and Peter in Russia. 
Such instances are, however, very rare ; and in general it is neither 
amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great im- 
provers and benefactors of mankind are to be found."— Consolations in 
Travel, pp. 34, 35. 

+ 

SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION. 
_ The Rev. Charles Kingsley has well observed that, as Superstition has 
its root in fear, the child of ignorance, so Science is the child of courage. 
The brave man faces nature boldly, and, like Rarey the horse-tamer 
tries to find out " what she is thinking of." But only a few men of 
courage, in few countries and at rare intervals, have dared to do so and 
then in opposition to public opinion. The Biblical writings testify to 
this having occurred among the Jews ; some of them did not blindly fear 
or worship nature, but viewed her lovingly and reverently ; while the 
Chaldeans, who made great discoveries in astronomy, sank eventually 
into astrology and planet-worship. Among the Greeks the fate ot 
Socrates is an evidence of the popular dread of science ; and among the 
Romans, 111 the days of the Antonines, it sank under the mud- waves of 
neo-Platonism. To the northern nations, under the guidance of Divine 
Providence, was reserved the honour of the true cultivation of physical 
science. In spite of the opposition of their contemporaries, those brave 
spints, Gerbert, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Galileo, and others 
boldly investigated nature. In the seventeenth century much was effected 
for the emancipation of the human intellect by the Royal Society and 
by other philosophers, and in the eighteenth more real progress was 
made m the accurate knowledge of nature than in all the fifteen preced- 
ing centuries. This result Mr. Kingsley considers to be greatly due to 
the influence of the study of the Bible, delivering the mind from the 
slavery of superstition. Scientific method he asserts to be simply the 
exercise of common sense, the ordinary use of our inductive and deduc- 
tive faculties, especially in the study of botany, zoology, and geology • 
and he refers to the writings of Thomas Carlyle as products of a mind 
fraught with the reverent spirit of science and intellectual truth. Science 
and superstition, Mr. Kingsley says, are internecine enemies ; and there 
always has been fierce opposition to science on the part of those in- 
terested in the fears of mankind. But science also suffers much from 



3 xo THE COMPOSITION OF WATER. 

the injurious patronage of those who would at the same time check her 
progress and restrain her utterances. Yet her votaries will still go on 
keeping their rank in the warfare against ignorance, fear, and cruelty, 
although they receive but very little of their due recompense for the in- 
conceivable benefits their labours have conferred upon the human race, 
among which are the immense increase of material wealth by creating 
new and lucrative employment for our redundant population ; nume- 
rous remedies for disease and pain ; humane and rational treatment of 
the insane ; more enlightened mental and physical education ; increase of 
life by the study of the laws of health ; and the saving of life and pre- 
vention of crime by overcoming the inhuman witch mania. From what 
has been done, how much may be looked for hereafter ! Mr. Kingsley 
concludes with part of the description of wisdom from the eighth chapter 
of the Book of Proverbs. 



WHO DISCOVERED THE COMPOSITION OF WATER? 

Watt, the Scotchman, and Cavendish, the Englishman, neither of 
whom seems to have been aware of what the other was doing. Mr. 
Muirhead, in his Life of Watt, seems to have put the priority of Watt 
beyond further doubt ; though he is somewhat hard upon Cavendish, 
who, there can be little question, made the discovery himself. Mr. 
Buckle, in a note upon this passage, says: 

That there was no plagiarism on the part of Watt, we know from 
positive evidence ; that there was none on the part of Cavendish, may be 
fairly presumed, both from the character of the man, and also from the 
fact that in the then state of chemical knowledge the discovery was 
imminent, and could not long have been delayed. It was antecedently 
probable that the composition of water should be ascertained by dif- 
ferent persons at the same time, as we have seen in many other dis- 
coveries which have been simultaneously made, when the human mind, 
in that particular department of inquiry, had reached a certain point. 
We are too apt to suspect philosophers of stealing from each other 
what their own abilities are sufficient to work out for themselves. It is, 
however, certain that Watt thought himself ill-treated by Cavendish. 

Between the two (continues Mr. Buckle), there was this difference. 
Watt, for several years previously, had been speculating- on the subject 
of water in connexion with air ; and having, by Black's law of latent heat, 
associated them together, he was prepared to believe that one is con- 
vertible into the other. The idea of an intimate analogy between the 
two bodies having once entered his mind, gradually ripened ; and when 
he at last completed the discovery, it was merely by reckoning from data 
which others possessed besides himself. Instead of bringing to light 
new facts, he drew new conclusions from former ideas. Cavendish, on 
the other hand, obtained his results from the method natural to an Eng- 
lishman. He did not venture to draw a fresh inference until he had 
first ascertained some fresh facts. Indeed, his discovery was so com- 
pletely an induction from his own experiments, that he omitted to take 
into consideration the theory of latent heat, from which Watt had rea- 



WHO INVENTED THE STEAM-ENGINE? 311 

soned, and where that eminent Scotchman had found the premises of his 
argument. Both of these great inquirers arrived at truth, but each ac- 
complished his journey by a different path. And this antithesis is accu- 
rately expressed by one of the most celebrated of living chemists (Liebig), 
who, in his remarks on the composition of water, truly says, that while 
Cavendish established the facts, Watt established the idea. 

It is important to quote the remarkable passage, which is quite de- 
cisive as to the real history of Watt's discovery, in his Correspondence, 
pp. 84, 85. On the 26th of November, 1783, he writes: "For many 
years 1 have entertained an opinion that air was a modification of water, 
which was originally founded on the facts, that in most cases where air 
was actually made, which should be distinguished from those wherein it 
is only extricated from substances containing it in their pores, or other- 
wise emitted to them in the state of air, the substances were such as were 
known to contain water as one of their constituent parts ; yet no water 
was obtained in the process, except what was known to be only loosely 
connected with them, such as the water of the crystallization of salts. 
This opinion arose from a discovery that the latent heat contained in steam 
diminished in proportion as the sensible heat of the water from nvhich it 
nvas produced increased; or, in other words, that the latent heat of 
steam was less when it was produced under a greater pressure, or in a 
more dense state, and greater when it was produced under a less pressure, 
or in a less dense state ; which led me to conclude that when a very 
great degree of heat was necessary for the production of the steam, the 
latent heat would be wholly changed into sensible heat ; and that in 
such cases the steam itself might suffer some remarkable change. I now 
abandon this opinion in so far as relates to the change of water into air, 
as I think that may be accounted for on better principles." 



WHO INVENTED THE STEAM-ENGINE ? 

In 1543, experiments were made by the Spaniard Don Blasco de 
Garay, a sea-captain, to propel vessels by a contrivance which has been 
loosely assimilated to a steam-engine. In going over the ground of his- 
tory, practised writers are continually stumbling. Thus, a popular 
journalist, referring to the above experiment, said: " Three centuries 
ago, Blasco de Garay attempted to propel a boat by steam in the har- 
bour of Barcelona." To this positive assertion it was replied, " The evi- 
dence cited by the Spaniards, often repeated, is a letter from Blasco him- 
self. By permission of the Queen of Spain, but after much hindrance, 
the person who questioned the statement, was enabled to inspect this 
letter, which is preserved with the archives at Simancas, near Valladolid, 
and there is not one word about steam in the document. Blasco de- 
scribes minutely a vessel propelled by paddles worked by 200 men. It 
is true that the two letters at Simancas do not mention steam, as pointed 
out by Mr. Macgregor to the Society of Arts, in 1858; but the account 
of the experiment as mentioned by Navarrete, leaves no doubt. We 
have not space for the entire details. Blasco de Garay is described to 



3 T2 WHO INVENTED THE STEAM-ENGINE? 

have presented to the Emperor Charles V. an engine which he had in- 
vented to propel large vessels without sails or-oars. " The inventor did 
not publish a description of his engine ; but the spectators saw that it 
consisted principally of an apparatus for boiling a great quantity of 
water ; in certain wheels, which served as oars ; and a machine that 
communicated to them the steam produced by the boiling water." Then 
we have the treasurer, Ravago's, objection, that " the boiler continually 
exposed the vessel to an explosion." The account concludes thus: 
" These facts are extracted from the original register in the archives at 
Simancas, among the papers of Catalonia, the register of the War Office 
of the year 1543." The "cauldron of boiling water" is also mentioned 
in the account from Navarrete, under "Barcelona," Penny Cyclopedia, 
vol. iv. p. 438. Mr. Macgregor impugns Navarrete' s report ; and, as 
the result of his inquiries in Spain, he attests that not only are the 
letters at Simancas without mention of the " steam," but it is not known 
there or at Barcelona, by the public officers. Supposing the evidence to 
be strictly correct, it bears only conjectural proof of the use of steam , 
though a boiler was used. Garay took away the machinery. It has 
been suggested that the moving power was obtained by an apparatus re- 
sembling the primitive steam-engine of Hero. Yet Dr. Delepierre 
records this experiment as complete, in these words: "On the 17th of 
April, 1543, the Spaniard Don Blasco de Garay launched a steam- 
vessel at Barcelona, in the presence of the Emperor Charles V."* 

Garay was rewarded, and the usefulness of the contrivance in towing 
ships out of port was admitted. The vessel was found to progress at 
the rate of a league an hour, or, according to Ravago, the treasurer, who 
was one of the commissioners (but unfriendly to the design), at the rate 
of three leagues in two hours ; but it did progress, and was found to be 
easily under command, and turned with facility to any point where it 
was directed. Favourable reports were made to the Emperor, and his 
son Philip ; but the design was not carried to any practical extent. The 
next claim to the invention was that made by Arago for Salomon De 
Caus, as described in his work, published at Frankfort in 16 15, and re- 
printed at Paris in 1624. De Caus was at one time in the service of 
Louis XIII., and afterwards in that of the Elector Palatine, who mar- 
ried the daughter of our James I. During the latter period he visited 
this country, and was employed by Henry, Prince of Wales, in orna- 
menting the Gardens of Richmond Palace. The passage referred to by 
Arago is much as follows : — Let there be attached to a ball of copper a 
tube and stopcock, and also another tube ; these tubes should reach 
almost to the bottom of the copper ball, and be well soldered in every 
part. The copper ball should then be filled with water through the tube, 
and the stopcock be shut, when, if the ball is placed on a fire, the heat 
acting upon it will cause the water to rise in the other tube. De Caus 
ascribed the force entirely to the air, and not to the steam, which he 
does not mention, though the pressure may have caused the ball to burst 
with a noise like a petard. Notwithstanding the advocacy of M. Arago, 



Historical Difficulties and Contested Events, 1868, p. 146. 



WHO INVENTED THE STEAM-ENGINE? 313 

De Cans is net entitled to any share in the invention of the steam- 
engine. 

"We now come to the Marquis of Worcester's " fire-engine, or water 
commanding engine, or an elementary steam-engine, a modern name ap- 
plied to an old invention, previously known, and afterwards known as 
an atmospheric engine," described in a MS. of 1655, and in Lord Wor- 
cester's Century of Inventions, 1663. Next, a pretended claim was set 
up by the French, asserting that Lord Worcester took the idea of his 
steam-engine from De Caus, and in proof of this assertion there ap- 
peared, six years after Arago's claims, a letter in the Museedes Families, 
purporting to have been written by Marion Delorme, on the 3rd of 
February, 1641, to her lover Cinq Mars. In this letter the writer says: 
" Pursuant to the wishes you have expressed, I am doing the honours to 
your English ord, the Marquis of Worcester, and I am taking him, or 

rather, he is taking me, from sight to sight For example, we paid 

a visit to Bicetre, where he thinks he has discovered in a maniac a man 

of genius As we were crossing the court-yard of the asylum, I 

more dead than alive from fright, a hideous face appeared behind the 
large grating, and began to cry out in a crazy voice : 'lam not mad, I 
have made a great discovery that will enrich any country that will carry 
it out.' ' What is this discovery ?' said I to the person who was showing 
us over the asylum. ' Ah !' said he, shrugging his shoulders, 'it is some- 
thing very simple, but you would never guess it. It is the employment 
of the steam of boiling water.' At this I burst out laughing. ' This man,' 
resumed the warder, ' is called Salomon De Caus. He came from 
Normandy four years ago to present a memoir to the king upon the 
marvellous effects that might be produced from this invention. To 
listen to him, you might make use of steam to move a theatre, to propel 
carriages, and in fact to perform endless miracles. The cardinal dis- 
missed this fool without giving him a hearing. 

"Salomon De Caus, not at all discouraged, took upon himself to follow 
my lord cardinal everywhere, who, tired of finding him incessantly at 
his heels, and importuned by his follies, ordered him to Bicetre, where 
he has been confined three years and a half, and where, as you have just 
heard, he cries out to every visitor that he is not mad, and that he has 
made a wonderful discovery. He has even written a book on the sub- 
ject, which is in my possession. 

" My Lord of Worcester, who all this time appeared to be in deep 
thought, asked to see the book, and after having read a few pages, said, 
! this man is not mad, and in my country, instead of being shut up in a 
lunatic asylum, he would be laden with wealth. Take me to him, I 
wish to question him. He was conducted to his cell, but came back 
looking grave and sad. ' Now he is quite mad,' said he ; 'it is you who 
have made him so; misfortune and confinement have completely 
destroyed his reason ; but when you put him into that cell, you enclosed 
in it the greatest genius of your epoch.' Thereupon we took our leave, 
and since then he speaks of no one but Salomon De Caus." 

This story was copied into standard works, and represented in en- 
gravings j but the letter proved to be a hoax ; and it was shown that 



314 THE OLD PHILOSOPHERS. 

not only had De Caus never been confined in a lunatic asylum, but that 
he had held the appointment of engineer and architect to Louis XIII. 
up to the time of his death, in 1630 ; whereas Marion Delorme is stated 
to have visited Bicetre in 1641. Dr. Delepierre has traced the hoax to 
one Berthoud, who confessed having written the letter signed by Marion 
Delorme, to suit an engraving which had been designed by Gavarni for 
another tale in the Musee des Families, the subject being a madman look- 
ing through the bars of his cell. Berthoud's confession was, however, dis- 
believed, and a Paris journal declared the Delorme letter was to be seen 
in a library in Normandy ; this was denied by Berthoud, who offered a 
million of francs to any one who would produce the letter. In a manu- 
script note in a volume in the castle of Heidelberg, the pretended 
letter of Delorme is stated to have been extracted from the Gazette de 
France, 3rd March, 1834; and at a banquet given at Limoges, so re- 
cently as TS65, M. le Vicomte de la Gueronniere, in a speech repeated 
the anecdote of De Caus and Bicetre, which was reported in the Moni- 
teur. The Rev. Sydney Smith believed the above letter to be authentic ; 
and Arago, who was rich in inventive faculty, and of very ardent tem- 
perament, was imposed upon by the above romantic fiction, conclusively 
proved by M. Figuier to be a forgery. 

In reference to the invention of Lord Worcester, Dr. Lardner ob- 
serves, that on comparing it with the contrivance previously suggested 
by De Caus, it will be observed that even if he (De Caus) knew the 
physical agent by which the water was driven upwards in the apparatus 
described by him, still it was only a method of causing a vessel of boil- 
ing water to empty itself, and before a repetition of the process could be 
made, the vessel should be refilled, and again boiled. In the contrivance 
of Lord Worcester, on the other hand, the agency of the steam was 
employed in the same manner as it is in the engines of the present day, 
being generated in one vessel and used for mechanical purposes in an- 
other. Nor must this distinction be regarded as trifling or insignificant, 
because on it depends the whole practicability of using steam as a me- 
chanical agent. Had its action been confined to the vessel in which it 
was produced, it never could have been employed for any useful purpose." 
—See History of Wonderful Inventions, 1868. 



THE OLD PHILOSOPHERS. 

Horace Walpole, who possessed great knowledge of life, though him- 
self disfigured by arrogant conceits, has left this satirical view of the 
wisdom of the ancient philosophers : 

" I thought that philosophers were virtuous, upright men, who loved 
wisdom, and were above the little passions and foibles of humanity. I 
thought they assumed that proud title as an earnest to the world that 
they intended to be somethig more than mortal ; that they engaged 
themselves to be patterns of excellence, and would utter no opinion, 
would pronounce no decision, but what they believed the quintessence oi 
truth ; that they always acted without prejudice and respect of persons. 



SIP ISAAC NEWTON'S APPLE-TREE. 315 

Indeed, we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous com- 
position of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions ! that some of them 
acted against all ideas of decency ; that others affected to doubt of their 
own senses ; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to 
think themselves superior to kings ; that they gave themselves airs of 
accounting for all that we do and do not see — and yet that no two of 
them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought fire, another water, 
the origin of all things ; and that some were even so absurd and impious 
as to displace God, and enthrone matter in his place. I do not mean to 
disparage such wise men, for we are really obliged to them : they anti- 
cipated and helped us off with an exceeding deal of nonsense, through 
which we might possibly have passed if they had not prevented us." 



SIR ISAAC NEWTON S APPLE-TREE, ETC. 

About the life of Newton what a number of misstatements and fal- 
lacies cling to this day, notwithstanding the vigilance of his biographers. 
Some of these are but idle tales of wonder ; others are prompted by 
baser motives. The tree which, by the falling of its fruit, suggested to 
Newton the idea of Gravity, is of paramount interest. It appears that, 
in the autumn of 1665, Newton left his college at Cambridge for his 
paternal home at Woolsthorpe. " When sitting alone in the garden," 
says Sir David Brewster, " and speculating on the power of Gravity, it 
occurred to him, that as the same power by which the apple fell to the 
ground was not sensibly diminished at the greatest distance from the 
centre of the earth to which we can reach, neither at the summits of the 
loftiest spires, nor on the tops of the highest mountains, it might extend 
to the moon and retain her in her orbit, in the same manner as it bends 
into a curve a stone or a cannon-ball when projected in a straight line 
from the surface of the earth." {Life of Newton, vol. i. p. 26.) Sir David 
Brewster notes, that neither Pemberton nor W histon, who received from 
Newton himself his first ideas of gravity, records this story of the falling 
apple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Catherine Barton, 
Newton's niece ; and to Mr. Green by Sir Martin Folkes, President of the 
Royal Society. Sir David Brewster saw the reputed apple-tree in T814, 
and brought away a portion of one of its roots. 

Professor de Morgan, however, questions whether the fruit nvas an 
apple, and maintains that the anecdote rests upon very slight authority. 
The story of the dog Diamond, who threw down a lighted candle, 
which consumed some papers, the almost finished labour of some 
years, is given by M. Biot as a true story ; and he characterizes the acci- 
dent as having deprived the sciences for ever of the fruit of so much of 
Newton's labours. Dr. Newton remarks, that Sir Isaac never had any 
communion with dogs or cats ; and Sir David Brewster adds, that the 
view which M. Biot has taken of the idle story of the dog Diamond, 
charged with fire-raising among Newton's manuscripts, and of the in- 
fluence of this accident upon the mind of their author, is utterly incom- 



3 i6 SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S APPLE-TREE. 

prehensible. The fiction, however, was turned to account in giving 
colour to M. Biot's misrepresentation. 

Whatever may have been the misstatements respecting Newton, they 
are exceeded in enormity by the attempt made in 1867, by M. Chasles, 
the French mathematician, on the authority of a series of documents 
purporting to be letters written by Newton and some of his most famous 
contemporaries ; and including in particular a correspondence which is 
supposed to have passed between him and Pascal, the celebrated French 
mathematician and divine. Their effect is to show that Newton was in- 
debted to that illustrious man, and other French philosophers, for many 
of the ideas on which his fame depends. It is not denied, as we un- 
derstand, that Newton was the first to publish, as well as to develope, that 
marvellous induction which is the foundation of half our knowledge 
about the universe. What is asserted is that he was led to it under the 
inspiration of Pascal, whose mathematical genius, as is well known, was 
equal to his theological learning. It is this assertion which crumbles to 
pieces on the first touch of the facts adduced. No explanation was 
given by M. Chasles, of the source whence the papers were derived. They 
were compared with Newton's letters in the possession of the Royal 
Society, at Burlington House, and their falsity was conclusive. Next, 
in a volume of extracts, compiled by a certain Pierre Desmaiseaux, three 
out of the five alleged specimens of Newton's handwriting were verbatim 
copies of isolated passages occurring in the French translation of three 
letters originally written by Newton in English. In other words, New- 
ton, who could not even read French without a dictionary, had been 
made by the fabricator to repeat in French to one correspondent, word 
for word, the identical expressions which he really used elsewhere in 
writing to another correspondent in English. 

In the autumn of 1867, Sir David Brewster read to the British Asso- 
ciation the following observations, tending to show that this was a 
gigantic fraud— the greatest ever attempted in the world as connected 
with science and literature. " 1. The correspondence was founded on 
the assumption that Newton was a precocious genius, having written on 
the infinitesimal calculus, &c, at the age of eleven, whereas he was then 
at school, and knew nothing of mathematics, occupying himself only 
with water-wheels and other boyish amusements. 2. There is no evidence 
that Pascal and Newton had any correspondence. Having examined the 
whole of Newton's papers in the possession of the Earl of Portsmouth, 
he never found any letter or paper in which Pascal was mentioned. 3. 
The letters from Hannah Ayscough, Newton's mother, bear his signa- 
ture, although she was a married woman, and could have signed Hannah 
Smith. 4. The letters of Pascal have been found by M. Fauquere to 
be another hand, and the signature not that of Pascal. 5. The letters 
of Newton are not in his hand, and some of them bear a signature 
which he never used. One of them is signed 'Newton,' as if he had 
been a member of the Peerage, and many of them ' J. Newton,' a sign 
which he never used. 6. An experiment with coffee is mentioned in 
one of the letters of Pascal, whereas coffee was at that time unknown 
in France. 7. All Newton's letters are in French, a language in which 



SIR IS A A C NE WTON>S APPLE- TREE. 3 1 7 

he never wrote. All his letters to the celebrated French mathematician, 
Vahgnon, are in Latin, and Newton himself has stated that he couUrnot 
read French without a dictionary. 8. The style and senthjKits in 
Newton's letters are such as he never could have used. Heexpresses 
* eternal ' gratitude to Pascal, a word which no Englishman ever uses. 
9. According to the correspondence, M. Desmaiseaux got access to 
Newton's papers after his death, and carried off a great many papers. 
Now, it is certain that Mr. Conduitt, Newton's nephew, arranged and ex- 
amined all Newton's papers, in order to obtain materials for a life of him, 
and having failed to find a competent person to write, he undertook it him- 
self, and obtained by persons then alive all the information that existed re- 
specting Newton's early life and studies. There could be no doubt, 
therefore, that the letters of Newton and Pascal were forgeries calculated 
and intended to transfer to Pascal the glory of the discovery of the law 
of gravitation which was due to Newton." 

One hundred and thirty years had elapsed since the death of the great 
Newton, when (in 1858) the men of Lincolnshire raised in Grantham, 
the birthplace of their illustrious townsman, a statue to his memory. 
We grow impatient to place the effigies of a great soldier upon some lofty 
column, or of a showy political leader upon some ornate pedestal ; but 
we suffer generation after generation to pass away ere we mark the 
place which gave birth to our most profound interpreter of the book of 
nature. " Happy," says an eloquent contemporary, " not only in his 
surpassing genius, but in the time of his birth, he conquered a universe 
where others may be justly proud to win a province. For all time he 
must in some sense remain thus alone. An equal or even a brighter 
genius, should such arise in the course of time, can never cast his great- 
ness into shade ; for never again can so sublime a problem be presented 
to the intellect of man as the great secret of the material universe which 
Newton was born to solve." Frankly as the pre-eminence of the English 
discoverer was admitted by men like La Grange, who followed in his 
track, there is a tinge of noble envy in the saying which Lord Brougham 
quotes from the French philosopher. " Newton," said La Grange, 
" was not only the greatest but the most fortunate genius that ever ex- 
isted ; because there can only once be found a system of the universe to 
be established." His good fortune, indeed, secures him from all future 
rivalry to the end of time, as amply as his matchless insight gave him the 
supremacy over all the explorers of nature who had lived before him. 

Halley writes of Newton's Principia: " It may be justly said that so 
many and so valuable philosophical truths as are herein discovered and 
put past dispute, were never yet owing to the capacity and industry of 
any one man." " The importance and generality of the discoveries," 
says Laplace, " and the immense number of original and profound 
views, which have been the germ of the most brilliant theories of the 
philosophers of this (18th) century, and all presented with much ele- 
gance, will insure to the work on the Mathematical Principles of Natural 
Philosophy a pre-eminence above all the other productions of human 
genius." 



3 i8 NATURALIZED FOREIGNERS. 

WHAT THE ENGLISH OWE TO NATURALIZED 
FOREIGNERS. 

The industry of England owes much to the foreigners who have from 
time to time become settled and naturalized amongst us. We are in- 
debted to German miners, introduced into England by the wisdom of 
Elizabeth, for the early development of our mineral resources. The 
Dutch were our principal instructors in civil and mechanical engineering ; 
draining extensive marsh and fen lands along the east coast in the reign 
of James I., and erecting for us pumping-engines and mill-machinery of 
various kinds. Many of the Flemings, driven from their own country by 
the Duke of Alva, sought and found an asylum in England, bringing with 
them their skill in dyeing, cloth-working, and horticulture ; while the 
thousands who flocked into the kingdom on the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes by Louis XIV., introduced the arts of manufacturing in glass, 
silk, velvet, lace, and cambric, which have since become established 
branches of industry. The religious persecutions in Belgium and France 
not only banished from those countries free Protestant thought, but at 
the same time expelled the best industrial skill, and England eventually 
obtained the benefit of both. 

Our mechanical proficiency, however, has been a comparatively recent 
growth. Like many others of our national qualities, it has come out 
suddenly and unexpectedly. The invention of the steam-engine, towards 
the end of last century, had the effect of giving an extraordinary impetus 
to improvement, particularly in various branches of iron manufacture ; 
and we began to export machines, engines, and ironwork to France, 
Germany, and the Low Countries, whence we had before imported them. 
Although this great invention was perfected by Watt, much of the pre- 
liminary investigation in connexion with the subject had been conducted 
by eminent French refugees : as by Desaguliers, the author of the well- 
known Course of Experimental Philosophy, and by Denis Papin, for some 
time Curator of the Royal Society, whose many ingenious applications of 
steam-power prove him to have been a person of great and original 
ability. But the most remarkable of these early inventors was un- 
questionably Thomas Savery — also said to have been a French refugee, 
though very little is known of him personally — who is entitled to the 
distinguished merit of having invented and constructed the first working 
steam-engine. All these men paved the way for Watt, who placed the 
copestone on the work of which the distinguished Frenchmen had in a 
great measure laid the foundations. 

Many other men of eminence, descendants of the refugees, might be 
named, who have from time to time added greatly to our scientific and 
productive resources. Amongst names which incidentally occur to us 
are those of Dollond the optician, and Fourdrinier, the inventor of the 
paper-making machine. Passing over these, many were the emigres who 
flocked over to England at the outbreak of the great French Revolution 
of 1789, and who maintained themselves by teaching the practice of art, 
and by other industrial pursuits. Of these, perhaps the most distin- 



GREEK ART. 



3'9 



guished was Marc Isambard Brunei, who for the greater part of his life 
followed the profession of an engineer, leaving behind him a son as illus- 
trious as himself, — Isambard Kingdom Brunei, the engineer of the 
Great Western and other railways, the designer of the Great Eastern 
steamship, and the architect of many important public works. — 
Abridged from the Quarterly Review, No. 223. 



THE ALPHONSINE TABLES. 

A splendid folio edition of the Astronomical books of King Alphonso 
X. of Castile, has been printed at Madrid by order of the Queen of 
Spain from the manuscript in the University of Alcala. The work 
is written in Spanish, being almost the first book of Western science 
written in a modern language, a great step towards the diffusion of 
knowledge in the thirteenth century. The introduction is the catalogue 
of the fixed stars, celebrated as the Alphonsine Tables. They are 
described as containing, besides the methods and tables, some eloquent 
and poetical explanations, and some short hints about astrology. The 
following passage will show how King Alphonso treated certain astrono- 
mical questions : 

Of Ursa Minor he says, " Some astronomers have taken it for a wain 
with its pole : others say it has the form of an animal, which might as 
well be a lion, a wolf, or a dog, as a male or female bear. Here, then, 
are heavenly animals inhabiting that part of the sky where this constella- 
tion is to be found, and recognised by ancient astronomers, because they 
saw four stars forming a square and three in a right line. They must 
have been endowed with a better eyesight than ours, and the sky must 
have been very clear. Since they say it is a she-bear, let it be one ; 
they were very lucky in being able to distinguish it." 

This reads like comic astronomy. If it be a fair specimen, the old 
astronomers did not err much in their estimate of the Alphonsine 
Tables. Regiomontanus says, " Beware lest you trust too much to 
blind calculation and Alphonsine dreams;" and Tycho Brahe reports 
that the 400,000 ducats expended upon the Tables would have been 
better laid out in actual observation of the heavens. In justice to 
Alphonso, however, we should add that the King had little or nothing 
to do with the construction of the Tables which bear his name. 



GREEK ART. 
Mr. Falkener, in his ingenious work Dadalus, has the following 
wholesome Advice to the Critic : — " Of one thing we cannot be too careful, 
lest w T e fall into a pedantry of art which leads us to praise Greek arc 
merely because it is Greek, and to despise modern art because it is not 
Greek. One reason will suffice to show this, though many others might 
be adduced — the injustice which is done to the modern artist. The 
ignorant critic may praise the antique, because he knows it to be safe, 



320 ENGINEERING MISCALCULATION. 

but let him pause before he proceeds to condemn a work which has 
entailed labour, thinking, and expense, united with a long study of the 
antique, and a constant analysis of modern wants. Let him reflect that 
he is seeking to gain a transient reputation from his pen, at the perma- 
nent loss of reputation to the artist ; that possibly his criticism may be 
false, and therefore, as the artist has no opportunity of being heard in 
defence, he is taking upon himself the part of a calumniator rather than 
that of a critic. Let him consider that he will more surely found a 
reputation, and gain respect, by making himself sufficiently acquainted 
with the art to be able to appreciate excellences ; and let the man of 
fortune consider that while possession of the antique may constitute, or 
be supposed to do so, the title for taste, the patronage of living artists 
will prove that he is imbued with a love of art, and wishes to 
improve it." 

♦— — 



INVENTION OF THE LOCOMOTIVE. 

The commonly received notion, for a length of time, was that George 
Stephenson was the inventor of the Locomotive for Railways. This is 
an error, as is also the belief that Stephenson first applied steam- 
power to Locomotive engines on railways. A critic in the Athenaum 
thus explains away both these errors: " Trevithick, in 1S04, built a 
locomotive which drew along the Merthyr Tydvil (South Wales) 
Railway a train of wagons loaded with ten tons of bar-iron, at the rate 
of five miles an hour ; and when George Stephenson built his first 
locomotive at Killingworth, he merely adopted the principles of a suc- 
cessful steam-locomotive which had been running for about two years 
on a railway within a few miles of his door. At this date, persons who 
presume to write about George ' Stephenson ought to know that so far 
as the Locomotive is concerned he was merely a copyist of a near 
neighbour's work, and has not the faintest shadow of a claim to be 
regarded as an inventor, or even an improver." 

The marble statue of Stephenson, at the Euston Terminus of the 
London and North-western Railway would, therefore, seem better to 
commemorate his engineering connexion with that line than his claims 
to be inventor of the Locomotive. 






ENGINEERING MISCALCULATION. 

Mr. Robert Stephenson, it will be recollected, stated that either iron 
or ice will bear a weight passing over it at a great velocity, which it 
could not bear if it went slower ; and that " when it goes quick, the 
weight in a manner ceases." To this a Correspondent of the Athenaum, 
No. 1635, replies : "The very reverse of this is the truth, as was clearly 
established by the ' Iron Commission/ which was appointed a few 
years since, to inquire into the causes of the breaking down of the iron 
bridge over the Dee. And the principle so established is now universally 
acted upon throughout our railways ; the speed of the trains, upon 



" GREAT EASTERN" STEAM-SHIP. 321 

approaching bridges of any considerable length, whether of iron or wood, 
is usually slackened to 8, 6, or even 4 miles an hour, according to cir- 
cumstances ; and the same rule— viz., of going slow, and not of going 
quick, is always observed in passing over an unsound pail of an embank- 
ment. I was myself present at some very interesting experiments made 
by this Commission at the iron bridge of the South-eastern Railway 
near Epsom, in the presence of Lord Wrottesley, Sir W. Cubitt, the 
Astronomer Royal and several others. Prof. Willis had contrived a 
very ingenious apparatus, which, fixed to the centre of one of the iron 
girders, measured and registered the deflection of the bridge at the 
passing over of any weight. An engine with a heavily-laden tender was 
then passed over the bridge at speeds varying from 10 to 60 miles an 
hour, and it was found that the greater the speed the greater was the 
deflection of the girder." 



THE " GREAT EASTERN STEAM SHIP AND THE ARK. 

While the Great Eastern was building, there appeared a pamphlet, 
in which this gigantic steam-ship was stated to be larger than the Ark, 
by persons to whom it did not occur that such an assertion could easily 
be tested. It has, however, been proved, beyond dispute, that so 
far from being larger, this monster ship is not so large by several hundred 
thousand cubic feet. The Great Eastern, then, is, in its longest part, 
692 feet; in the broadest, 83 feet, and 60 feet deep. "In order to be 
certain of measuring the ship correctly," says the Correspondent by 
whom the calculation was made, " I planed up a rectangular prism of 
dry mahogany, corresponding to the above dimensions, to a scale of the 
64th part of an inch to a foot. This piece of wood contained 13*1295 
cubic inches, and it weighed sixty-four pennyweights, I then formed it 
to the model of the hull of the ship, and weighed it again, and it weighed 
forty-four pennyweights ; it now became an easy arithmetical process 
to find this model contained only 9*0265 cubic inches ; this number 
multiplied into the cube of 64, gives 2366242*816 cubic feet for the 
content of the whole ship. According to the best commentators a 
cubit equals 21*888 inches, or 1*824 foot: and we read in Genesis, 
' Thou shalt make the ark 300 cubits long [or 547^2 feet], 50 cubits 
broad [or 01*2 feet], 30 cubits deep [or 54*72 feet].' These ' numbers 
multiplied into each other give nearly 2,730,782 cubic feet for the con- 
tent of the whole ark, which it will be seen is 364539*184 cubic feet 
more than the Great Eastern. The writers of the pamphlet above 
j alluded to say this ship is six times the size of the Duke of Wellington 
line-of-battle ship, therefore, — 

2366242*816 + a 366242-8i6 = 276o6l6 . 6l86 

cubic feet for both these vessels. It will be seen by an inspection of 
these figures that the ark is within 29,835 feet of being as large as both 
these large ships put together." 

Y 



322 HISTORY OF MANNERS. 

Two points in this letter will be considered open to question, i. He 
treats the ark as a parallelogram. 2. The cubit is ordinarily considered 
to be about 18 English inches. 



HISTORY OF MANNERS. 

We should not venture to call our levees and drawing-rooms the 
remnants of barbarism and savagery. Yet they must clearly be traced 
back to the Middle Ages, when homage was done by each subject by 
putting his hands joined between the hands of the King. This, again, 
was originally a mere symbol, an imitation of the act by which a van- 
quished enemy surrendered himself to his despoiler. We know from 
the sculptures of Nineveh and from other sources that it was the custom 
of the conqueror to put his foot on the neck of his enemy. This, too, 
has been abbreviated ; and as in Europe gentlemen now only kiss the 
King's hand, we find that in the Tonga Islands, when a subject ap- 
proaches to do homage, the chief has to hold up his foot behind, as a 
horse does, and the subject touches the sole with his fingers, thus placing 
himself, as it were, under the sole of his lord's foot. Every one seems 
to have the right of doing reverence in this way when he pleases ; and 
chiefs get so tired of holding up their feet to be touched that they make 
their escape at the very sight of a loyal subject. 

Who has not wondered sometimes at the fumbling efforts of gentle- 
men in removing their gloves before shaking hands with a lady, the 
only object being, it would seem, to substitute a warm hand for a cool 
glove ? Yet in the ages of chivalry there was a good reason for it. A 
knight's glove was a steel gauntlet, and a squeeze with that would have 
been painful. 

Another extraordinary feature in the history of manners is the utter 
disability of people to judge of the manners of other nations, or of former 
ages, with anything like fairness or common sense. An English lady 
travelling in the East turns away her face with disgust when she sees 
Oriental women passing by with bare feet and bare legs ; while the 
Eastern ladies are horrified at the idea of women in Europe walking 
about barefaced. Admirers of Goethe may get over the idea that this 
great poet certainly ate fish with a knife ; but when we are told that 
Beatrice never used a fork, and that Dante never changed his linen for 
weeks, some of our illusions are rudely disturbed. We mourn in black, 
and think that nothing can be more natural ; the aborigines of Australia 
mourn in white, and their clothing being of the scantiest, they plaster 
their foreheads, the tips of their noses, and the lower part of the orbits of 
their eyes with pipe clay. As long as the people of Europe represented 
the Devil in human form they represented him in black. In Africa the 
natives of the Guinea coast paint him in the whitest colours. To 
Northern nations Hell was a cold place, a dreary region of snow and 
frost ; to Eastern nations, and those who derive their notions from the 
East, the place of torment was ablaze with fire and flame. Who shall 
tell which is right ? — Times journal. 






FASHIONS IN DRESS. 323 



ASSYRIAN ART. 

Was the art of the Assyrians really of home growth, or imported 
from the Egyptians, either directly or by way of Phenicia ? The latter 
view has been sometimes taken ; but the most cursory study of the 
Assyrian remains, in chronological order, is sufficient to d sprove the 
theory, since it will at once show that the earliest specimens of Assyrian 
art are the most un-Egyptian in character. No doubt there are certain 
analogies even here, as the preference for the profile, the stiffness and 
formality, the ignorance or disregard of perspective, and the like ; but 
the analogies are such as would be tolerably sure to occur in the early 
efforts of any two races not very dissimilar to one another, while the 
little resemblances, which alone prove connection, are entirely wanting. 
These do not appear until we come to monuments which belong to the 
time of Sargon, when direct connection between Egypt and Assyria 
seems to have begun, and Egyptian captives are known to have been 
transported into Mesopotamia in large numbers. — Rawlinson's Ancient 
Monarchies. 



FASHIONS IN DRESS. — MALE AND FEMALE. 

The following is from a popular paper on the art of Dress, reprinted 
from the Quarterly Review, in 1852 : — 

" A certain old father, soured by the circumstances of his lot, relieved 
some of his spleen by defining woman as £wov (pikoKoo-fiov — Anglice, an 
animal that delights in finery ; and this saying, naturally so acceptable 
to disappointed gentlemen of all orders, continued an authority even to 
the time of the amiable Spectator, who was not ashamed to quote it. 
We had nevertheless, long ago, serious doubts on the venerable dictum ; 
and it now appears, from Mr. Planche's History of Costume and other 
meritorious works now before us, that we cannot point to one single 
excess or caprice of dress which has appeared on the beautiful person of 
woman, that has not had its counterpart, as bad, or worse, upon the 
ugly body of man. We have had the same effeminate stuffs — the same 
fine laces — the same rich furs — the same costly jewels. We have had 
as much gold and embroidery, and more tinsel and trumpery. We 
have worn long hair, and large sleeves, and tight waists, and full petti- 
coats. We have sported stays and stomachers, muffs, ear-rings, and 
love-locks. We have rouged and patched, and padded and laced. 
Where they have indulged a little extravagance in one part, we have 
broken out ten times worse in another. If they have had head-dresses 
I like the moon's crescent, we have had shoes like a ram's horn. If they 
i have lined their petticoats with whalebone, we have stuffed our trunk- 
; hose with bran. If they have wreathed lace ruffs round their lovely 
I throats, we have buttoned them about our clumsy legs. If they carried 
* a little mirror openly in their fans, we have concealed one slily in our 
J pockets. In short, wherever we look into the history of mankind, 
whether through the annals of courtiers, the evidence of painters, or, as 

Y 2 



324 STORY OF AN ARUNDEL MARBLE. 

now, through the condescending researches of a Lady of Rank, we find 
two animals equally fond of dress, but only one worth bestowing it on, 
which the Greek father doubtless knew as well as we." 



HOUBRAKEN S HEADS. 

Jacob Houbraken, the eminent Dutch engraver, who chiefly excelled 
in portraits, in which he was principally employed, is more noted for the 
boldness of his stroke, brilliancy of colour, and correct drawing, than 
for reliable accuracy. Lord Orford tells us, that Houbraken "was 
ignorant of our history, uninquisitive into the authenticity of the draw- 
ings which were transmitted to him, and engraved whatever was sent." 
Two instances are adduced, namely, Carr, Earl of Somerset, and Secre- 
tary Thurloe, as not only spurious, but not having the least resemblance 
to the persons whom they pretend to represent. An anonymous but 
evidently well informed writer in the Gentleman s Magazine, further 
states that " Thurloe's, and about thirty of the others, are copied from 
heads painted for no one knows whom." 



STORY OF AN ARUNDEL MARBLE. 

Early in 1868 there was exhibited to the British Archaeological As- 
sociation a marble head, which, through the assistance of coins and 
medals, had been identified as the head of the Empress Magnia Urbica, 
one of the nine wives of the cruel and profligate Marcus Aurelius 
Carinus, who was proclaimed Caesar in the year 282 ; on the mysterious 
death of his father in 283, he became joint emperor with his brother 
Numerianus, and, after a brief reign, was assassinated in the moment of 
victory, at Margum, in Moesia, a.d. 285 ; his rival, Diocletian, thus 
becoming sole master of the Roman Empire. 

The bust of Magnia Urbica, of the saccharine marble of Massa 
Carrara, is radiant with natural loveliness of feature and expression, "in 
pride of youth, in beauty's bloom," when innocence and affection had 
full possession of her heart and mind. It bears all the peculiarities of 
busts of the third century of our era — marked attention to the details of 
features, the chiselling out of the eyeballs and pupils, and careful deli- 
neation of the nostrils, ears, and hair. The statement respecting this rem- 
nant of antiquity is, that it was once in the collection of Thomas, Earl 
of Arundel, and that when this nobleman's mansion in the Strand was 
pulled down in 1678, this, with other mutilated pieces of sculpture, was 
obtained by Boyder Cuper, who had been gardener in Lord Arundel's 
family, and who employed these ancient relics in ornamenting a place of 
public amusement he had opened on the Surrey side of the Thames, just 
opposite Somerset House. Aubrey, speaking of Cuper's garden, says 
that " the convenience of its arbours, walks, and several remains of 
Greek and Roman antiquities, have made this place much frequented." 
The establishment, however, became disreputable, and was closed in the 



THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND. 32^ 

year 1753, whilst under the management of Widow Evans; but one 
who knew well the locality before the Waterloo Road was formed 
through the centre of the grounds, told the writer he distinctly remem- 
bered pieces of antique sculpture lying about unheeded on banks, and 
in hollows of the grounds, though the bulk of "the Arundel Marbles " 
had gradually been dispersed to enrich the rockwork of suburban gar- 
dens. Thus, our marble effigy of the august Magnia Urbica, which 
once probably adorned the stately palace of a proud Caesar, in lovely 
Italy, after resting for awhile in the princely dwelling of an English 
nobleman, at length became the property of the keeper of a public garden 
in swampy Lambeth, and helped to decorate a rendezvous of vice and 
infamy. 



VAST BUILDINGS ERECTED BY SLAVERY. 

In Mexico and Peru, the lower classes being at the disposal of the 
upper, there followed that frivolous waste of labour which we observe 
in Egypt, and evidence of which may be seen in the remains of those 
temples and palaces that are still to be found in several parts of Asia. 
Both Mexicans and Peruvians erected immense buildings, which were as 
useless as those of Egypt, and which no country could produce, unless 
the labour of the people were ill-paid and ill-directed.* The Mexicans 
appear to have been even more wantonly prodigal than the Peruvians : 
one of their immense pyramids, Cholula, had a base twice as broad 
as the largest Egyptian pyramid. The cost of these monuments 
of vanity is unknown ; but it must have been enormous ; since the 
Americans, being ignorant of the use of iron, were unable to employ a 
resource by which, in the construction of large works, labour is greatly 
abridged. Some particulars, however, have been preserved, from which 
an idea may be formed on this subject. To take, for instance, the 
palaces of their kings : we find that in Peru, the erection of the royal 
residence occupied during fifty years 20,000 men: striking facts, which, 
if all other testimonies had perished, would enable us to appreciate the 
condition of countries in which, for such insignificant purposes, such 
vast power was expended. — Buckle's History of Civilization, vol. i. 



THE ROUND TOWERS OF IRELAND. 

The learned Dr. Petrie, who died in 1867, by his researches into the 
history of the Round Towers of Ireland — an inquiry more thoroughly 
vexed than almost any modern one of the sort — is considered to have 



* Prescott notes : ' ' The Tezcucan monarchy, like those of Asia and ancient 
Egypt, had the control of immense masses of men, and would sometimes turn 
the whole population of a conquered city, including the women, into the public 
works. The most gigantic monuments of architecture which the world has 
witnessed would never have been reared by the hands of freemen !" 



3 26 FALLA CIES OF ST A TISTICS. 

set the question at rest. He has shown that they are, undoubtedly, 
Christian buildings intended as Bell-houses, which their name in Irish 
signifies; and further, probably, for the safe keeping of the sacred 
vessels, &c, in time of war or tumult. In 1832, for his Essay on the 
History of the Round Towers, Dr. Petrie received the prize offered by the 
Irish Society, in all 900/., on account of the work ; besides which, other 
rewards were bestowed upon him, including a pension of 300/. per 
annum. Yet a critic in the Athenaum demurs to Dr. Petrie's settlements, 
and maintains that, although Dr. Petrie's researches have been of great 
service, the conclusion at which he arrived obtained slight acceptation 
among the really learned, and may be said to have rather added fuel to 
the disputes than assuaged their intensity ; those disputes remain at 
present in abeyance for lack of material rather than energy on the part 
of those who have interested themselves in the matter. Dr. Petrie at- 
tributed to the Round Towers a Christian origin, in which he was pro- 
bably correct, although it can hardly be doubted that he set too far 
back in time the date of their erection. These structures have been the 
causes of no less wit than controversy ; the best thing said about them 
is that they were built on purpose to puzzle the moderns. Beyond all 
possibility of doubt, they were notbuiit solely, if at all, for the purposes 
ascribed to them by Dr. Petrie. Had they been castles of the ancient 
Irish, their form would alone suffice to justify all that has been alleged 
about the national blunderings ; that they were not belfries cannot be 
considered settled by the fact that belfries were in some cases built be- 
side them. Some have claimed for them an origin coeval with that of 
the Pyramids ; others have found in the fanaux de cimetiere of France 
similar and allied structures of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 

Among the many contributions to the controversy, is a Discourse of 
the Round Towers, by John Flanagan, published 1843 ; it is a small 
quarto of 24 pages, beautifully printed. The author boldly says that 
" there are no RoundTowers in Ireland," p. 8 ; however, it seems doubt- 
ful whether this work is genuine ; so much having been written in jest 
as well as earnest upon the Towers. 



FALLACIES OF STATISTICS. 

Archbishop Whately acutely remarks upon the overrated impor- 
tance of Statistics : Increase of a thing is often confounded with our in- 
creased knowledge of it. When crimes or accidents are recorded in 
newspapers more than formerly, some people fancy that they happen 
more than formerly. But crimes, especially (be it observed) such as 
are most remote from the experience of each individual, and therefore 
strike him as something strange, always furnish interesting articles of 
intelligence. I have no doubt that a single murder in Great Britain has 
often furnished matter for discourse to more than twenty times as many 
persons as any twenty such murders would in Turkey. Some foreign 
traveller in England is said to have remarked on the perceptible diminu- 
tion in the number of crimes committed during the sitting of Parliament 



LAST HALF CENTURY OF INVENTIONS. 327 

as a proof of our high reverence for that assembly ; the fact being, as we 
all know, that the space occupied in the newspapers by the debates causes 
the records of many crimes to be omitted. Men are liable to form an 
over-estimate of the purity of morals in the country as compared with a 
town, or in a barren and thinly-peopled as compared with a fertile and 
populous district. On a given area, it must always be expected that 
the absolute amount of vice will be greater in a town than in the country, 
so also will be that of virtue ; but the proportion of the two must be 
computed on quite different principles. A physician of great skill and 
in high repute probably loses many more patients than an ordinary 
practitioner ; but this proves nothing till we have ascertained the com- 
parative numbers of their patients. Mistakes such as this (which are 
very frequent) remind one of the well-known riddle, " What is the 
reason that white sheep eat more than black ones ?" 

In 1867 Mr. Saville Lumley, in his report on the Russian Tea Trade, 
set down the number of tea consumers in Russia at 60,000,000, out of 
a population of 75,000,000; to which a Correspondent of the Times re- 
plied that, "probably, Mr. Lumley established this proportion from what 
he saw of the St. Petersburghers and Muscovites, inveterate tea-drinkers ; 
this proportion, however, will not stand good for the whole country. I 
generally reside in Russia, and fully half my time is occupied in tra- 
velling through the wealthiest as well as the poorest governments of the 
empire ; and many are the times that I have had to hunt through half a 
dozen villages before I could find a Samovar, the indispensable adjunct 
to tea drinking in Russia. No children, and comparatively few women 
in Russia drink tea ; while, say 30 per cent of the male peasantry are 
non-habitual drinkers, either because they cannot afford the luxury, or 
have not the opportunities which others possess, of laying themselves in 
soak. Deducting, therefore, 25 millions for children and women, and 
ten millions for the non-habitual male drinkers, there remain 40 millions 
of regular tea drinkers ; this I think far nearer the mark than Mr. 
Lumley 's proportion. By far a larger quantity of hot water is consumed 
in Russia over the 30 millions of pounds of tea, than in England over 
the 200 millions pounds." These facts are interesting, in addition to 
their showing the fallacy of evidence taken from one portion of a coun- 
try being taken as proof of the general custom of the whole people. 



THE LAST HALF CENTURY OF INVENTIONS. 

It is in the three momentous matters of Light, Locomotion, and Com- 
munication, that the progress effected in this generation contrasts most 
surprisingly with the aggregate of the progress effected in all previous 
generations put together since the earliest dawn of authentic history. 
The lamps and torches which illuminated Belshazzar's feast were probably 
just as brilliant, and framed out of nearly the same materials, as those 
which shone upon the splendid fetes of Versailles, when Marie Antoinette 
presided over them, or those of the Tuileries during the Imperial mag- 
nificence of the First Napoleon. Pine- wood, oil, and perhaps wax, 



328 LAST HALF CENTURY OF LNVENTIONS. 

lighted the banquet halls of the wealthiest nobles alike in the eighteenth 
century before Christ and in the eighteenth century after Christ. There 
was little difference, except in finish of workmanship and elegance of 
design — little, if any, advance, we mean, in the illuminating power, or in 
the source whence that power was drawn — between the lamps used in 
the days of the Pyramids, the days of the Coliseum, and the days of 
Kensington Palace. Fifty years ago, that is, we burnt the same articles 
and got about the same amount of light from them, as we did 5000 
years ago. Now we use gas, of which each burner is equal to fifteen or 
twenty candles ; and when we wish for more can have recourse to the 
electric light or analogous inventions, which are fifty-fold more brilliant 
and far-reaching than even the best gas. The streets of cities, which 
from the days of Pharaoh to those of Voltaire, were dim and gloomy, 
even where not wholly unlighted, now blaze everywhere (except in 
London) with something of the brilliancy of moonlight. In a word, all 
the advance that has been made in these respects has been made since 
many of us were children. We remember light as it was in the days of 
Solomon; we see it as Drummond and Faraday have made it. 

The same thing may be said of locomotion. Nimrod and Noah travelled 
just in the same way, and just at the same rate, as Thomas Assheton 
Smith and Mr. Coke of Norfolk. The chariots of the Olympic games 
went just as fast as the chariots that conveyed our nobles to the Derby, 
" in our hot youth, when George the Third was king." When Abraham 
wanted to send a message to Lot he despatched a man on horseback 
who galloped twelve miles an hour. When our fathers wanted to send 
a message to their nephews they could do no better and go no quicker. 
When we were young, if we wished to travel from London to Edinburgh 
we thought ourselves lucky if we could average eight miles an hour — 
just as P^obert Bruce might have done. Now, in our old age, we feel 
ourselves aggrieved if we do not average forty miles. Everything that 
has been done in this line since the world began — everything, perhaps, 
that the capacities of matter and the conditions of the human frame will 
ever allow to be done — has been done since we were boys. 1 he same 
at sea. Probably when the wind was favourable, Ulysses, who was a 
bold and skilful navigator, sailed as fast as a Dutch merchantman of the 
year i8co, nearly as fast at times as an American yacht or clipper of 
our fathers' day. Now we steam twelve and fifteen miles an hour with 
wonderful regularity, whether wind and tide be favourable or not ; nor 
is it likely we shall ever be able to go much faster. But the progress in 
the means of communication is the most remarkable of all. In this 
respect Mr. Pitt was no better off than Pericles or Agamemnon. If 
Ruth had wished to write to Naomi, or David to send a word of love 
to Jonathan when he was a hundred miles away, they could not pos- 
sibly have done it under twelve hours. Nor could we to our friends 
thirty years ago. In 1867 the humblest citizen of Great Britain can 
send such a message, not 100 miles, but 1000 in twelve minutes. — From 
the Spectator newspaper. 



3*9 



§00hs, proses, tit. 




FALSE ESTIMATES OF POPULAR BOOKS. 

EFTS' Mistakes. — Samuel Pepys, the diarist, has some preten- 
sion to notice as a man of letters, — having written a romance, 
and, at least, two songs. The former he prudently burned, 
though not without some regret, doubting he could not do it 
so well over again if he should try. He does not appear to have got be- 
yond the false taste of his times, as he extols Volpone and The Silent Woman, 
as the best plays he ever saw ; and accounts the Midsummer Night's 
Dream the most insipid and ridiculous. Othello he sets down as "a 
mean thing ;" Henry Fill., although much cried up, did not please him, 
even though he went with purpose to be pleased ; it was, in his 
opinion, " a simple thing, made of patches ;" " and, besides the show and 
processions in it, there was nothing well done." But the most diverting 
circumstance is the series of unsuccessful efforts which Pepys made to 
relish the celebrated Hudibras of Butler, then enjoying all the blaze of novel 
popularity. Possibly some remaining predilection for the opinions which 
are ridiculed in that witty satire prevented his falling in with the uni- 
versal fashion of admiring it. The first part of Hudibras cost him two 
shillings and sixpence, but he found it so silly an abuse of a Presbyterian 
knight going to the wars, that he became ashamed of it, and prudently 
sold it for eighteenpence. Wise by experience, he did not buy the 
second part, but only borrowed it to read. 

Popularity of Milton. — Waller, upon the coming out of the Paradise 
Lost, wrote to the Duke of Buckingham, amongst other pretty things, 
as follows : " Milton, the old blind schoolmaster, has lately written a 
poem on the Fa 1 ! of Man — remarkable for nothing but its extreme 
length !" Our divine poet asked a fit audience, although it should be but 
few. His prayer was heard : a fit audience for the Paradise Lost has 
ever been, and at this moment must be, a small one, and we cannot 
affect to believe that it is destined to be much increased by what is 
called the March of Intellect. — Quarterly Review, 1824. 

Gil Bias and Telemaque. — Professor Kingsley, in some ingenious 
remarks on the literature of the ancien regime, has chosen Gil Bias 
and Telemaque as specimens of its worst and best spirit. W e 
quote what he says of Gil Bias : — " It is the ancien regime itself. It 
sets forth to the men thereof themselves, without veil or cowardly- 
reticence of any kind; and inasmuch as every man loves himself, 
the ancien regime loved Gil Bias, and said, 'The problem of 
humanity is solved at last.' But, ye long-suffering powers of 
Heaven, what a solution ! It is beside the matter to call the book un- 
godly, immoral, base. Le Sage would have answered, ' Of course it is, 
for so is the world of which it is a picture.' No ; the most notable 



33 o FALSE ESTIMATES OF POPULAR BOOKS. 

thing about the book is its intense stupidity, its barrenness, dreariness, 
ignorance of the human heart, want of any human interest. If it be an 
epic, the actors in it are not men or women, but ferrets — with here and 
there, of course, a stray rabbit on whose brains they may feed. It is 
the inhuman mirror of an inhuman age, in which the healthy human 
heart can find no more interest than in a pathological museum." 

This is Mr. Kingsley's view of Telemaque : — " The king with 
Fenelon is always to be the father of his people, which is tantamount 
to saying that the people are to be always children, and in a condition 
of tutelage, voluntary if possible, but if not, of tutelage still. Of self- 
government, and education of human beings into free manhood by the 
exercise of self-government, free will, free thought — of this Fenelon had 
surely not a glimpse There is a defect in Telemaque which is per- 
haps deeper still. No woman in it exercises an influence over man 
except for evil." 

Tristram Shandy. — Horace Walpole,* in his Letters, vol. iii. p. 298, 
writes : " At present nothing is talked of, nothing admired, but what I 
cannot help calling a very insipid and tedious performance : it is a kind 
of novel, called The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, the greatest 
humour of which consists in the whole narration always going back- 
wards. I can conceive a man saying that it would be droll to write a 
book in that manner, but have no notion of his persevering in executing 
it. It makes one smile two or three times in the beginning, but in re- 
compense makes one yawn for two hours. The characters are tolerably 
kept up, but the humour is for ever attempted and missed. The best 
thing in it is a sermon, oddly coupled with a good deal of bawdy, and 
both the composition of a clergyman. The man's head, indeed, was a 
little turned before, and he is now topsy-turvy with his success and 
fame. Dodsley has given him 650/. for the second edition, and two 
more volumes (which I suppose will reach backwards to his great-great- 
grandfather) ; Lord Fauconberg a donative of 160/. a year ; and Bishop 
Warburton gave him a purse of gold, and his compliment (which hap- 
pened to be a contradiction), 'that it was quite an original composi- 
tion, and in the true Cervantic vein ;' the only copy that ever was an 
original, except in painting, where they all pretend to be so. War- 
burton, however, not content with this, recommended the book to the 
bench of bishops, and told them Mr. Sterne, the author, was the 
English Rabelais. They had never heard of such a writer." 

Bunyans Pilgrim s Progress has attained the greatest notoriety of all 
his works. " If," says the Editor of the Penny Cyclopedia, " a judgment 



* Lord Macaulay has left this very trenchant estimate of Walpole : Horace 
Walpole was ' ' the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the 
most suspicious of men. His mind was a bundle of inconsistent whims and 
affectations. In everything in which he busied himself, in the fine arts, in 
literature, in public affairs, he was drawn by some strange attraction, from the 

great to the little, and from the useful to the odd There is scarcely a 

writer in whose works it would be possible to find so many contradictory 
judgments, so many sentences of extravagant nonsense." 



FALSE ESTIMATES OF POPULAR BOOKS. 331 

is to be formed of the merits of a book by the number of times it has 
been reprinted, and the many languages into which it has been trans- 
lated, no production in English literature is superior to this coarse 
allegory, (Pilgrim's Progress.} On a composition which has been ex- 
tolled by Dr. Johnson, and which in our times has received a very high 
critical opinion in its favour, it is hazardous to venture a disapproval ; 
and we, perhaps, speak the opinion of a small minority when we con- 
fess that, to us, it appears to be mean, jejune, and wearisome." 

Shakspeare and his Commentators. — In the Diversions of Purley, 
Tooke says : " The ignorance and presumption of his commentators 
have shamefully disfigured Shakspeare's text. The first folio, notwith- 
standing some few palpable misprints, requires none of their alterations. 
Had they understood English as well as he did, they would not have 
quarrelled with his language." And again, " Rack is a very common 
word, most happily used, and ought not to be displaced because the com- 
mentators knew not its meaning. If such a rule were adopted, the com- 
mentators themselves would, most of them, become speechless." Yet, he 
departs from the folio to read " one dowle that's in my plume" for the 
folio plumbe, in the Tempest ; and in Antony and Cleopatra, his commen- 
tary alters the rack dis limes into dis limbs. Matthias's attack on the 
commentators, in his Pursuits of Literature, was once very popular. It 
is alluded to even by Schlegel. 

Baron Munchausen. — It is generally believed that Munchausen is only 
a nom-de-guerre. Such, however, is not the fact. Baron Munch-Hausen 
was a Hanoverian nobleman, and so late as forty-five years ago, he was 
alive and lying. It is true that the travels published as his, though not 
by him, were intended as a satire or parody on the travels of the 
famous Baron de Tott ; but Munch-Hausen was really in the habit of 
relating the adventures now sanctioned by the authority of his men- 
dacious name, as having positively occurred to him ; and he is supposed 
to have, at length, believed what he related. There was nothing of the 
fanfaron or braggart in his manner ; on the contrary, he was distin- 
guished by the peculiar modesty of his manner and demeanour. — New 
Monthly Magazine. 

Chesterfield's Letters have been much abused, but have found de- 
fenders. Some other wit has not unhappily called them the Scoundrel's 
Primer. When they were published, Dr. Johnson said they inculcated 
the morals of a strumpet and the manners of a dancing-master. 
— " After all," says Mr. Malone," these ' Letters' have been, I think, un- 
reasonably decried ; for supposing a young man to be properly guarded 
against the base principles of dissimulation, &c, which they enforce, he 
may derive much advantage from the many minute directions which 
they contain, that other instructors, and even parents, don't think it 
worth while to mention. In this, and almost everything else, the world 
generally seizes on two or three obviously ridiculous circumstances, 
talks a great deal about them, and passes over all the valuable parts 
that may still be found in the work, or in the character they are criticiz- 
ing. I have heard persons laugh at the noble writer's laying weight upon 



33a FALSE ESTIMATES OF POPULAR BOOKS. 

such trifling matters as paring nails, or opening a dirty pocket handker- 
chief in company. Yet, trifling as these instructions are, I have ob- 
served these very people greatly negligent in those very particulars. 
Lord Chesterfield, however, by his perpetual attention to propriety, 
decorum, bienseance, &c, had so 'veneered his manners, that though he 
lived on good terms with all the world, he had not a single friend." 

Worthless and Despised Books. — In a paper in the Edinburgh Re-view 
on the " Library of the British Museum," we read : — " Setting aside 
the unforeseen value which events may give to intrinsically worthless 
books, and the fact that posterity is not always of our way of 
thinking as to the merits of others, it is not to be forgotten that 
our very contempt tends to endow a book with an ultimate 
bibliographical consequence. Little will the Ames or Dibdin of 
the year 2059 care, bibliographically speaking, for the works of 
Hallam and Macaulay, Scott and Wordsworth, the early editions of 
which will be obtainable, in dusty calf or abraded morocco, for nine- 
pence a volume, at every bookstall ; but fabulous prices will be realized 
by copies, unique or of excessive rarity, of a Cumming's Apocalyptic 
Sketches, or a Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy ; a set of Playbills will 
fetch the price of a whole library of the classics ; and an auction of the 
facetiae of the middle of the nineteenth century will agitate the hearts 
of bibliomaniacs who have vainly endeavoured to possess themselves of 
an editio princeps of the Ascent of Mont Blanc, or Mrs. Caudle's Lectures. 
Although it may sound like a paradox, libraries are swelled to an enor- 
mous bulk, not so much by the treasures of literature, as by its dregs 
and its scum. A moderate apartment may receive all the noblest 
monuments of human thought and knowledge, though " the world itself 
could not contain all the books that should be written" for the varied 
intercourse of society. The great productions of literary genius are 
borne onwards with the stream and are imperishable ; the whims and 
fashions of the hour sink to the bottom, and can only be rescued from 
total oblivion by those who have the courage to dive down to the 
accumulated rubbish of past ages. 

"Despised books have a strange trick of revenging themselves, by 
becoming indispensable. Dr. Bandinel gave ten times its weight in gold 
for the ' riff-raff' condemned by Sir Thomas Bodley, who, on the 
repeated application of the first Bodleian librarian, Dr. James, to be 
allowed to purchase plays, replied, ' I can see no good reason to alter my 
opinion for excluding such books as almanacks, plays, and an infinite 
number that are daily printed, of very unworthy matter and handling.' 
A short time before the date of this letter, was printed Marlowe's 
True Tragedie of Richarde, Duke of Torke, and the Death of Good King 
Henrie the Sixt, a copy of which was purchased a few years ago, by Mr. 
Rodd, for the Bodleian Library, for 131/.— being, we believe, the high- 
est price ever, up to that time, given for a single play. It is recorded 
that one of the libraries, which had a copyright claim, rejected as worth- 
less the first works of Walter Scott, Mrs. Opie, Wordsworth, Shelley, 
Lord Brougham, and M'Culloch. ' It is in the fragments,' writes M. 
Libri, ' of some alphabets, of some small grammars published for the 



MODERN MYTHOLOGY. 333 

use of schools, about the middle of the fifteenth century, or in the letters 
distributed in Germany by the religious bodies commissioned to collect 
alms, that bibliographers now seek to discover the first processes 
employed by the inventors of xylography and of typography. It is in 
a forgotten collection of indifferent plates, published at Venice, by 
Fausto Verantio, that an engineer may find the first diagram of iron 
suspension bridges.' " 



BIRTHDAY OF SHAKSPEARE AND CERVANTES.* 

As regards the day of Shakspeare's birth, what proof is there of the 
bard having been born in the month of April at all ? That the 23rd, 
at least, was not the day of his birth, is all but certain. Such was not 
the understanding of those relatives or friends under whose care his 
tomb was erected, and who may fairly be supposed to have had the 
best knowledge upon the subject. From the terms of the Stratford 
inscription — Obiit ano. dot. 161 6, atatis 53, die 23 Apr. — it is clear they 
never conceived his birth to have fallen upon the same day of the month 
as that of his death, he having gone at the time of the record some way 
at all events into his fifty -third year, instead of having exactly completed 
the exact annual cycle. The 23rd of April having been also usually 
given as the date of the death of Cervantes, not a little of puerile, half- 
mystical sentiment has been vented upon the supposed extinction of two 
such mighty luminaries of the firmament of genius on one and the same 
day. To Mr. Robert Chambers (in the Book of Days), seems to be due 
the credit of having, for the first time, exploded this fallacy — as follows : 
— " It has not heretofore been pointed out that, if Shakspeare died on 
the day reckoned the 23rd of April in England, and Cervantes on that 
reckoned the 23rd of April in Spain, these two great, and in some 
measure kindred geniuses, necessarily did not die on the same day. 
Spain had adopted the Gregorian calendar on its first promulgation in 
1582, and consequently the 23rd day of April in Spain corresponded with 
the 13th in England; there being at that time ten days' difference 
between the new and old style." 



MODERN MYTHOLOGY. 

Professor Max Miiller, in his learned lecture upon this branch of 
study, enters fully into the origin of the different stories about the 



* In 1867, the German newspapers announced the death of a man who was so 
devoted an admirer of Cervantes that he spent nearly the whole of his life, and 
a considerable fortune, in collecting every edition of Don Quixote which had 
been published in Europe since its first appearance. There were found in the 
library of this curious bibliomaniac 400 editions of Don Quixote in the Spanish 
language, 168 in French, 200 in English, 87 in Portuguese, 96 in Italian, 70 in 
German, 4 in Russian, 4 in Greek, 8 in Polish, 6 in Danish, 13 in Swedish, and 
5 in Latin. 



334 



MODERN MYTHOLOGY. 



Barnacle goose. He quotes from the Philosophical Transactions of 1678 
a full account by Sir Robert Morray, who declared that he had seen 
within the barnacle shell, as through a concave or diminishing glass, the 
bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings, tail, feet, and feathers of the barnacle 
goose. The next witness was John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, 
who, in 1507, declared that he had seen the actual metamorphosis of 
the mussel into the bird, describing how — 

"The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore- 
said lace or string ; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and as it 
groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all 
come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into the sea, when 
it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than a mallart ; for 
the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, 
and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good witnesses." 

As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the 
writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the 
truth of the miraculous origin of the barnacle geese, but he warns the 
Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they 
were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, " If a man during Lent were 
to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should 
not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern 
myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus, 
iEneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, 
and was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, De volucri 
arhorea, with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed 
its origin to a play of words. The mussel shells are called Bernacula 
from the Latin perna, the mediaeval Latin berna ; the birds are called 
Hibernictf or Hibernicula: abbreviated to BernicuU. As their names seem 
one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires to 
confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good Irish 
story — a mere canard— with all the dignity of scientific, and all the 
solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live until the 
age of Newton. Specimens of Lepadidce, prepared by Professor Rol- 
leston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the Anatifera 
could have supported the popular superstition which derived the Ber- 
nicla, the goose, from the Bernicula, the shell. 

Professor Max M idler has also examined shortly the origin of some 
mediaeval legends, such as the legend of St. Christopher, of St. Ignatius 
Theophorus, which owed their origin entirely to the misapprehension of 
a name. The story of the talking crucifix of Bonaventura is traced back 
to the saying of Bonaventura that it was the image which dictated all 
his works to him. The legends of saints fighting with dragons ' are ex- 
plained as allegorical representations of their struggles with sin. St. Patrick, 
driving away every poisonous creature from Ireland, is explained as a 
missionary who had successfully driven out the venomous brood of 
heresy and idolatry ; and the belief in martyrs walking about after their 
execution with their heads in their arms is traced back to sculptures in 
which martyrs, executed by the sword, were so represented. Another 
case of modern mythology is when an abstract term, expressive of a 






THE STORY OF DIDO. 33 $ 

quality, or of a mode of existence, is raised into a substantial, real, and 
personal being. This tendency, which in ancient times led to the crea- 
tion of gods and goddesses, such as Virtue and Peace, and to a belief in 
beings such as Kronos, Time, Eos, Dawn, Demeter, Earth, produces 
in our own times conceptions of a similar character, such as Nature, 
Force, Atoms, Imponderable substances, Ether, &c, which receive a 
passing worship in the successive schools of philosophy, and are at the 
bottom of most of the controversies which occupy the thoughts of each 
generation.— Saturday Review. 



FATE OF AMBITIOUS RULERS. 

In the historic page, you, of course, meet with hundreds of men cele- 
brated for their victories ; and amongst others, Alexander, Philip, Gassar, 
Hannibal, Pompey, Anthony, Pyrrhus, Sylla, Seleucus; and in your 
own times, Napoleon. But it is equally true that in the same page 
you find it recorded, that in all these campaigns, the conduct of all and 
each of these individuals was governed by ambition, not patriotism — 
personal aggrandizement, not the good of their subjects or fellow country- 
men. And, what were their several rewards ? Alexander and Hannibal, 
a cup of poison ; Anthony died the death of a suicide ; Pyrrhus was 
killed by a brick thrown by a Spartan woman ; Sylla was killed by 
vermin; Philip, Cassar, Pompey, and Seleucus, were assassinated; and 
Napoleon died on the rock of St. Helena, an exile from his country. 

Almost all great men, who have performed, or who are destined to 
perform, great things, are sparing of words. Their communing is with 
themselves rather than others. They feed upon their own thoughts, 
and in these inward musings brew those intellectual and active energies, 
the development of which constitutes the great character. Napoleon 
became a babbler only when his fate was accomplished, and his fortune 
was on the decline. — Lamartine. 



THE STORY OF DIDO. 

Virgil, like all the poets that aim at surpassing truth, history, and na- 
ture, has much rather injured than embellished the image of Dido. 1 he 
Dido of history, widow of Sicheus, and faithful to the manes of her 
former spouse, causes her funeral pile to be prepared on the promontory 
of Carthage, and ascends it, the sublime and voluntary victim of a pure 
love, and of a faithfulness even unto death. This is somewhat finer, 
holier, and more pathetic than the cold gallantries which the Roman 
poet allows her with the ridiculous and pious iEneas, and her amorous 
despair, in which the reader cannot sympathize. But the Anna Soror, 
and the magnificent farewell, and the immortal imprecation that follow, 
will ever plead a pardon for Virgil. — Lamartine. 



336 THE GREAT MOGUL. 



BURNING ALIVE 

Was no more a reality than John Doe and Richard Roe; and the 
obstinate retention of the form of the sentence, for generations after it 
had ceased to be executed, proves, not the cruelty of our ancestors, but 
the extraordinary pedantry of our lawyers, who could not part with a 
fiction, whether revolting or childish, without suffering under the agony 
of a severe operation. — {Notes and Queries, 3rd S. No. 19.) 

Mr. Phillimore, in his History of England, needlessly exaggerates in 
his references to the burning of women. He refers to this in three 
several places. In the first he states, quite correctly, " The law ordered 
women to be burnt alive in 1770; it is said the hangman generally 
strangled them first — Jy consensT A few pages further on he declares 
that women were burnt alive ; and yet again he returns to the charge in 
a little while, declaring that Elizabeth Hering was burnt alive in 1773, 
and that all the details are given in the Annual Register. His authority, 
however, does not bear him out, but distinctly declares that Elizabeth 
Hering was first strangled. 

WHO'S WHO ? 

Mr. Roebuck, M.P., in a speech at Salisbury in 1862, related the fol- 
lowing anecdote :— " I recollect some years ago, being in Hampshire, I 
went out of my house in the morning, with the Times in my hand, and 
going into the garden, I found a labouring man whom I rather liked — 
a shrewd, clever fellow. He said, ' Any news, sir, this morning ?' 
' Yes,' I replied, ' rather bad news.' ' Bad news ! what's that, sir ?' 
' Why,' I said, ' the Duke of Wellington is dead.' ' Ah, sir,' he re- 
marked, ' I be very sorry for he ; but who was he ?' Now if I had not 
heard that I should not have believed it. The man who said it lived 
within one hundred miles of London ; was a clever, shrewd fellow, and 
yet he wanted to know who was the Duke of Wellington. Could you 
have believed that within one hundred miles of London there was dark- 
ness so great that the name of Wellington was unknown to a man be- 
tween fifty and sixty years of age ? But so it was—' I'm very sorry 
for he, sir,' he said; 'but who was he ?' "* 



THE GREAT MOGUL. 

Mr. Henry Mead, in his work on the Sepoy Revolt, gives the follow- 
ing very graphic picture of the " Great Mogul " and his offshoots : — 

"It is little more than half a century since Lord Lake, whilst en- 
gaged in a campaign against the Mahrattas encamped near the city of 
Delhi, and making his way into the palace, found there the represen- 
tative of the royal house of Timor in the person of an aged man, poor 

* By this anecdote we are reminded that, although sixteen years have nearly 
elapsed since this great, man was laid in his tomb, the erection of the 
National Monument voted to his memory has not been commenced ! 



THE GREA T MOGUL. 33 >- 



helpless and blind, the plaything of fortune, the prize, by turns, of 
numerous adventurers. His ancestors had, by the law of force, at one 
time acquired the dominion of all India ; and the rule which had raised 
them to the pinnacle of greatness had sunk him to the lowest depths of 
abasement. He had lived to see the dominions over which he had him- 
self reigned, the prize of successive conquerors ; his wealth scattered, 
his wives dishonoured, and had reached the climax of human misery,' 
when a brutal soldier scooped his eyes out with a dagger, and left him 
without the hope of better days. The English general seated him again 
in the chair of royalty, and in return for a parchment gift of the coun- 
tries which he had won, and intended to keep, by the sword, allotted to 
him the first rank in the long line of mockery-kings that once reigned, 
but now who merely live in India. In public and private the Padisha,' 
as he was called, received the signs of homage which were considered to 
belong to his pre-eminent station. He had never forgiven the English 
since a governor-general insisted upon having a chair in his presence ; 
and, until recently, the agent of the latter, when vouchsafed the honour 
of an audience, addressed him with folded hands, in the attitude of sup- 
plication. He never received letters, only petitions : and conferred an 
exalted favour on the government of British India by accepting a 
monthly present of 80,000 rupees. Merely as a mark of excessive con- 
descension, he tacitly sanctioned all our acts, withdrew his royal appro- 
bation from each and all of our native enemies, and fired salutes upon 
every occasion of a victory achieved by our troops. 

" Hitherto it would have been impossible to have found a royal ally 
more courteously disposed ; and we believe it never entered the brain ot 
the most suspicious diplomatist, that the treaties between the Great 
Mogul and the East India Company were in any danger of being violated 
by his majesty. To sweep away the house of Tamerlane would not 
have added one jot to our power. Outside the walls of his palace, the 
King of Delhi, as he was termed, had no more authority than the 
meanest of those whom he had been taught to consider his born vassals ; 
but within that enclosure his will was fate, and there were 12,000 
persons who lived subject to it. The universal voice of society ascribed 
to this population the habitual practice of crimes of which the very 
existence is unknown at home, except to the few who form the core of 
the corrupt civilization of great cities. Its princes lived without dignity, 
and its female aristocracy continued to exist without honour. The 
physical type of manhood was debased, whilst the intellectual qualifi- 
cations of both sexes, with one or two exceptions, did not reach even 
the Mohammedan standard of merit, perhaps the lowest in the scale of 
modern humanity. But a ' Light of the World' could not exist even 
in these days without experiencing earthly troubles. His Majesty 
had no fear of Mahratta daggers, and his pension was paid far more 
punctually than were the revenues of his ancestors. Domestic troubles 
were more burdensome, perhaps, to his effulgent shoulders than would 
be the cares of the universe, and there were no less than 1200 little lights 
which radiated upon him from all parts of Hindostan, and required a 
great deal of oil to keep them burning. It was no uncommon thing for 

z 



$ 3 8 AN INGENIOUS FORGERY. 

one of this celestial race to be obliged to live on fifty shillings a month y 
but in no case did he forget the dignity of his birth. A Mussulman is 
obliged to settle a dowry upon his wife, and a member of the Soolatun 
(plural for Sultan) never endows her with less than 50,000/. Their 
sole occupation was confined to playing on the Indian lute, and singing 
the king's verses. Too proud to work with their hands, too ignorant 
to be useful with their heads, they would have been content to continue 
for generations to come in their late miserable condition — forlorn mortals, 
empty alike in pocket and stomach, in heart and brain, and conscious 
only of the possession of unsatisfied appetites." 



AN INGENIOUS FORGERY. 

By far the most accomplished forger of modern times is M. Simonides. 
He comes from the Island of Syrene, opposite Caria, and made his first 
public appearance at Athens, where he offered some MSS. for sale which 
he said had been carried off secretly from Mount Athos. A commission 
which was engaged to examine them reported favourably, especially upon 
a MS. of Homer, which was accordingly purchased at a high price. 
Before very long it was discovered that the text of this ancient MS. was 
Wolf's, with all the errata. Next he appeared at Constantinople, 
where he tried hieroglyphics, cuneiform inscriptions, and Armenian 
history, but somewhat unsuccessfully. Nothing daunted, he tried a new 
device, and came out as another Dousterswivel. He declared that at a 
certain spot an Arabic MS. in Syriac characters would be discovered by 
digging. Workmen were accordingly employed, Simonides himself not 
being allowed to descend. By-and-by a pause was made for luncheon, 
and not long afterwards Simonides called out, " There it is ; bring it 
up." The soil about it, however, was quite different from that of the 
ground. The workmen were grinning, and when interrogated confessed 
that during luncheon the Greek came out for a short time, jumped into 
the pit, and began to burrow. He next made his appearance in England 
with, amongst other wonderful treasures, a MS. of Homer on Serpent's 
skin, which professed to have been sent from Chios Hipparchus, son of 
Pisistratus. This and several others he persuaded Sir T. Phillips to 
purchase. Almost the only libraries which he failed in cheating were 
the British Museum and the Bodleian. On visiting the latter place he 
showed some fragments of MSS. to Mr. Coxe, who assented to their 
belonging to the twelfth century. "And these, Mr. Coxe, belong to 
the tenth or eleventh century ?" " Yes, probably." " And now, Mr. 
Coxe, let me show you a very ancient and valuable MS. I have for eale, 
and which ought to be in your library. To what century do you con- 
sider this belongs ?" " This, Mr. Simonides, I have no doubt," said Mr. 
Coxe, "belongs to the nineteenth century." The Greek and his MSS. 
^disappeared. Some time afterwards a palimpsest manuscript was sent 
to Berlin, professing to be a history of the kings of Egypt in Greek, 
by Uranius of Alexandria. The Academy declared it genuine, and the 
Minister of Public Instruction was ordered to purchase it for 5000 






HISTORICAL PHRASES. 339 

thalers. Professor Dindorf offered the University of Oxford the honour 
of giving this valuable book to the world, and the work was accordingly 
begun under the editorship of the professor. Before many sheets, how- 
ever, were struck off, notice came that the printing was to be stopped. 
Lepsius, naturally anxious to know~ how fax Uranius supported or de- 
molished some of the theories about Egyptian history, was disappointed 
as well as amused to find that the book was little more than a transla- 
tion into very bad Greek of portions of the writings of Bunsen and 
himself. Ehrenberg then examined the manuscript with his microscope, 
and discovered that the palimpsest was really later than the more modern 
one— the old ink overlaid the new< — Gornbill Magazine, 



HISTORICAL PHRASES. 

A valuable feature in the work of Herr Buchmaim* is the collection 
of Historical Phrases, with rectifications of many that are attributed to 
wrong parents, and anecdotes relating to others. The saying that " no 
one is a hero to his valet"' is taken from Madame Cornuel, who 
had but one talent, and is given to Montaigne, who has ten 
talents. Louis XIV. may or may not have said, " Cetat c'est moi," 
but there is no good authority for it beyond the character of 
the monarch. " La parele a etc donn'ee a Ikomme pour deguiser sa 
pensee' is always ascribed to Talleyrand, but belongs really to 
Voltaire. It seems also that "the beginning of the end" is not Talley- 
rand's, though no other author has been discovered for it; and 
Talleyrand's *' They have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing," occurs 
in a letter of the date of 1796, written to Mallet du Pan, and published 
In his correspondence. In like manner, Metternich's " Apres nous le 
deluge" was the property of Madame de Pompadour. Nothing is more 
generally quoted among men of letters than Buffon's sentence, " Le style 
c'est Vhamnte" And yet this sentence does not occur in Buffon ; nor 
does the moral which everybody draws from it belong to Buffon. 
What Buffon really says is something very different. After praising a 
careful style, and declaring that only well-written works will descend to 
posterity, he adds that knowledge, facts, even discoveries, do not ensure 
a long life to a work if it is not well written, because facts and dis- 
coveries can be easily transplanted into other works, and even gain by a 
more skilful treatment. Ces choses sont hors de Ihomme, le siyle est de 
Ihomme meme" This does not mean that a man's style is his character, 
but that his style is all he can contribute of himself — two very different 
things. It is not surprising that the Count of Artois did not utter the 
phrase, " II ny a rien de change, ilny a quun Fran cats de plus" ; but we 
are amused at being introduced to the actual author in the throes of 
composition, and at hearing Talleyrand, who presided over the work, 



* Gefliigelte Worte ; der Citazcnschatz dcs Deutschen Volks. Von Geor£ 
Buchmann. Berlin, 1864. 

z 2 



34 b HISTORICAL PHRASES. 

tell him that he had only to make a good speech, suitable to the time 
and the man, and the Prince would believe that he had actually spoken 
it. Napoleon is more fortunate, as he is left in undisturbed possession 
of the " one step from the sublime to the ridiculous." 

The newest German phrases are derived almost exclusively from the 
late or present Ministers of Prussia. If the Bismark Cabinet has con- 
tributed little to the statesmanship or honour of the country, it has 
enriched the language by some popular expressions which are not 
unworthy of their authors. Von Roon started the " pleasing tempe- 
rature" of the Upper Chamber ; Bismark himself is the father of 
" Catilinist existences," " iron and blood ;" while others have contributed 
the common phrases of " moral conquests," and of " a promise not 
worth the paper on which it is written." The name of Philistines, 
which Mr. Arnold proposes for adoption in England, seems to have 
originated at Jena in 1693. After a fight between town and gown, in 
which a student was killed, the pastor of Jena preached upon the fray, 
and said it reminded him of the words, " The Philistines are upon thee, 
Samson." With this story we may couple another, which Herr 
Biichmann places under the head of Luther. The Germans have a 
phrase for anything that is at the last gasp, "that it is in the last of 
Matthew," this being Luther's way of referring to the last chapter of 
Matthew. A Catholic preacher, talking of Protestantism in his sermon, 
said that it was in the last of Matthew, and after church a Protestant 
came up and thanked the priest for bis admirable sermon. " What," 
said the priest, " you, a Protestant, thank me !" " Why not ?" replied 
the other ; " is it not written in the last of Matthew, 'Lo, I am with 
you always, even to the end of the world.' " — Saturday Review. 



THE BOROUGH OF OLD SARUM. 

In the Cornhill Magazine, September, 1868, is a paper entitled 
" Pocket Boroughs," containing a curious account of the decayed vil- 
lages and collections of ruined sheds and barns which used to return 
members to Parliament in the old times, but which were disfranchised 
by the Reform Bill of 1832. Of the most corrupt instance of these 
" pocket boroughs" we here read : 

" The case of Old Sarum is a very peculiar one. This place used always to 
be quoted as one of the most flagrant examples of the absurdity of the old sys- 
tem, and any allusion to the one inhabitant of that ancient borough, who was 
supposed to return its two members, was always thought a good joke. But 
the fact is, that, till about 120 years ago, there was not even one inhabitant of 
Old Sarum ; and I remember being puzzled at first how to reconcile this fact 
with the record of ' contested elections ' which occurred there in the reign 
of Charles II., and again in the reign of Queen Anne. But on examining 
the point one sees that these were cases rather of disputed returns than 
of contests in the modern sense. Not but what there were materials 
for even these. It did not follow in those days that because there were no 
residents, therefore there were no voters. And on the site of Old Sarum 
still flourished fourteen freeholders, who were likewise 'burgage holders,' 



WHAT IS BUNCOMBE* 



34* 



and who met periodically under the ' Election Elm' — a tree which I regarded 
with veneration — to choose their representatives in Parliament. Sarum had 
once been a place of great importance. Its castle was one of the chief barriers 
of the south-west against the incursions of the Welsh ; and before the removal 
of its cathedral into the valley where it now stands, it must have been one of the 
finest cities in the kingdom. But when no longer required as a military post, it 
bj easy to see that its inaccessible position, on the summit of a very steep and 
very lofty hill, would soon lead to its desertion. But as early as the reign of 
Henry VIII., the old town was in ruins, and not a single house in it inhabited. 
And we may suppose that by the end of the seventeenth century it had become 
just the bare mound that it is at present." 

To this we may add that the burgage tenure of Old Sarum was pur- 
chased by Governor Pitt, who once owned " the Pitt Diamond ;" and 
here at Stratford House, at the foot of the fortress hill, lived Robert 
Pitt, the father of Lord Chatham, whom Miss Seward erroneously states 
to have been born here : the birthplace of the great Minister was, ho w- 
ever, in the parish of St, James, Westminster. 



WHAT IS BUNCOMBE? 

What is the real meaning of that which the Americans have named 
Buncombe? What are the conditions favourable to this diseased 
growth ? The social stratum most susceptible of Buncombe is that 
which forms the main substance of American society. Americans are 
almost universally educated to the point of admiring ornament, but 
not up to the point of distinguishing gold from tinsel. All Buncombe 
iis a form of vulgarity which resembles most closely the ostentation of 
a man who has sprung suddenly into wealth. The gentleman who 
" strikes oil" in America covers his house and his dress with barbaric 
ornaments ; and as the whole nation may be said to have struck oil 
metaphorically, it is not strange that they adorn their language with a 
similar mass of tinsel. The most extreme and offensive forms of Bun- 
combe survive chiefly in the half-settled districts ; and the really cul- 
tivated Americans — such men as Washington Irving or Hawthorne or 
Mr. Longfellow — write a style fully as pure as Englishmen of the same 
literary standing. 

Buncombe, then, may be described, not as a necessary product of 
democracy, but rather of the rapidly changing state of society. When 
things have come to a state of equilibrium, each class will have its appro- 
priate costume, both mental and physical. But when a large number 
of persons suddenly discover that they ought to be much wiser and 
more eloquent than is actually the case, they show all the awkwardness 
of a clown introduced into good society, by indulging in very grotesque 
and gorgeous ornaments. And the only way in which they can be 
thoroughly reformed is by receiving that amount of general education 
which will enable them to pay due respect to the best models. Perhaps 
it is a too sanguine expectation that within any moderate time the 
English shopkeeper will be able to distinguish between Buncombe and 
real eloquence, and to prefer simplicity to tinsel. It may be still longer 



5 4 2 LEADERS OF THE ENGLISH REBELLION. 

before the gentlemen whose profession it is to, fetter a mob will not 
seek to impose upon them by using the most many-syllabled words 
and the sentences most heavily weighted with epithets that they can 
discover. Only we may take some comfort from the fact, that side by 
side with inflated nonsense, good vigorous English is a most powerful 
weapon, and will end by establishing always its superiority over windy 
bombast. — Abridged from the Saturday Review. 



APPENDIX. 



LEADERS OF THE ENGLISH REBELLION. 

The Rebellion was an outbreak of the democratic spirit, a movement 
from below, an uprising from the foundations, or as some will have it, 
the dregs of society. Cornet Joyce, who carried off Charles L, and 
who was highly respected in the army, had, however, been recently a 
common working tailor, or, as Clarendon describes him, "a fellow who 
had, two or three years before, served in a very inferior employment in 
Mr. Hollis's house." Colonel Pride, whose name is preserved m his- 
tory as having purged the House of Commons of its malignants, was 
about on a level with Joyce, since his original occupation was that of 
a drayman ; it is said that Cromwell, in ridicule of the old distinctions, 
conferred knighthood on him " with a faggot.'* But the tailor and the 
drayman were, in that age, strong enough to direct the course of public 
affairs, and to win for them a position in the state. 

Of the Fifth Monarchy men, three principal and most distinguished 
members were Venner, Tufnel, and Okey. Yenner, who was the 
leader, was a wine-cooper. Tufnel was a carpenter living in Gray's-inn- 
lane. And Okey, though he became a colonel, had been a stoker in 
a brewhouse at Islington, and next a most poor chandler, near Lion 
Key, in Thames-street. Cromwell himself was a brewer at Huntingdon, 
as stated by his own physician ; and Golonel Jones, his brother-in-law, 
had been servant to a private gentleman. Deane was a servant to a 
toyman in Ipswich ; but he became an admiral, and was made one of 
the Commissioners of the Navy. Colonel Goffe had been apprentice to 
a drysalter ; Major General Whalley had been apprentice to a woollen- 
draper, but became " a broken clothier.'* Skipton, a common soldier, 
who had received no education, was appointed commander of the 
London Militia; he was declared commander-in-chief in Ireland; and 
he became one of the fourteen members of Cromweirs Council, Two 
of the lieutenants of the Tower were Berkstead and Tichborne. Berk- 
stead had heretofore sold needles, bodkins, and thimbles, and would 
have run on any errand anywhere for a little money. Tichborne, who 
was a linendraper, not only received the lieutenancy of the Tower, but 



LEADERS OF THE ENGLISH REBELLION. 343 

became a colonel, and a member of the Committee of State in 1655, and 
of the Council of State in 1659. Other traders were equally successful ; 
the highest prizes being open to all men, provided they displayed the 
requisite capacity. Colonel Harvey was a decayed silkman, who got 
the Bishop of London's house and manor of Fulham. So was also 
Colonel Rowe ; and Colonel Venn was a " broken silkman in Cheap- 
side.'" Sal way had been an apprentice to a grocer, but, being an able 
man, he rose to the rank of a major in the army ; he received the 
King's Remembrancer's Office; and in 1659 he was appointed by 
Parliament a member of the Council of State. Around that council 
board were also gathered Bond, a woollen-draper at Dorchester, and 
Cawley, the brewer in Chichester ; while by their side we find John 
Berner, who is said to have been a private servant, and Cornelius 
Holland, who had been a link-boy and a servant. Among others who 
were promoted to offices of trust, were Packe, the woollen-draper ; 
Perry, the weaver ; and Pemble, the tailor. The Parliament which 
was summoned in 1653 is still remembered as Barebones, who was a 
leatherseller in Fleet- street. Thus, too, Downing, though a poor 
charity-boy, became Teller of the Exchequer, and representative of 
England at the Hague. The common opinion is that he was the 
(illegitimate ?) son of a clergyman at Hackney, though this is doubtful ; 
and no one appears to know who his father was. To these we may 
add that Colonel Horton had been a gentleman's servant : Cromwell 
had a great regard for this remarkable man. Colonel Berry had been 
awoodmonger; Colonel Cooper a haberdasher ; Major Rolfe a shoe- 
maker ; Colonel Fox a tinker ; and Colonel Hewson a cobbler. 

In the provinces, in 1647, Chelmsford was governed by a tinker, two 
cobblers, two tailors, and two pedlars ; and at Cambridge most of the 
colonels and officers were mean tradesmen, brewers, tailors, goldsmiths, 
shoemakers, and the like. And, when Whitelocke was at Sweden, in 
1653, the proctor of one of the towns abused the Parliament, saying 
that " they had killed their king, and were a company of taylors and 
cobblers." 

Yet, some of the above classes were ostentatious enough ; for Walker, 
who relates what he himself had witnessed, says, that about 1649, the 
army was commanded by " colonels and superior officers who lord it in 
their gilt coaches, rich apparel, costly feastings ; though some of them 
led dray-horses, wore leather pelts, and were never able to name their 
own fathers and mothers." — Condensed from Buckle's Hist. Civilization 
in England, vol. i., where the several authorities are quoted. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



ABBOTS and Prelates, Fighting, in the 
■*■*■ Middle Ages, 279 
Adullam, the Cave, 260 
./Eschylus, Death of, 20 
Albans, St., First Duke of, 174 
Alexander the Great, and his Horse Buce- 
phalus, 21 
Alexandrian Library, the, 34 
Alfred's acquirements, estimates of, 87 
Alfred's Time Candles, 87 
" All Men have their Price," 247 
Alphonsine Tables, the, 319 
Alps, Hannibal's Passage through, 37 
Ambitious Rulers, Fate of, 335 
America, Discovery of, 65 
American War, how it might have been 

prevented, 199 
Anacharsis Clootz, 256 
Anacharsis, Travels of, 12 
Ancien Regime, Prof. Kingsley on, 226 
Ancient and Modern Oratory, estimate of, 8 
Anne Boleyn, where buried, 146 
Antiquarianism, Worth of, 8 
Antoninus Commodus, death of, 64 
Ants, Colossal, producing Gold, 19 
Apollonius of Tyana, Who was he ? 291 
Arbela, the Battle of, 20 
Arc, Joan of, was she burnt as a Witch ? 

220 
Archaeology, Praehistoric, 305 
Archimedes and his Burning-lenses, 61 
Aristocracy, English, Origin of, 105 
Aristocracy, What is it? 105 
Armada, the Invincible, 150 
Arthurs, Two, and the Round Table, 84 
Arundel Marble, Story of an, 324 
Assassination of Thomas a. Becket, 280 
Assyrian Art, characteristics of, 323 
Attila, King of the Huns, 62 
Augustine, Mission of, 65 
Aulus Gellius, and his Nodes A tticee, 21 
Authorities, Historical, Worth of, 7 

"DACON, Friar Roger, his Brazen 
■° Head, 49 

Baker's Chronicle of the Kings of Eng- 
land, 179, 180, 181 
Ballad of Fair Rosamond, 99 
Ballad on Jane Shore, 128 
Ballad of Robin Hood, 108 
Ballad of the Wandering Jew, 44 
Barnacle Goose, history ot the, 334 
Baron Munchausen, on, 331 



Bastille fatalities, 301 

Battles, Decisive, of the World, 3, 4 

Battle of Otterbourne, 119 

Battle of Spurs, 109 

Battle of the Thirty, no 

Becket, Thomas, Assassination of, 280 

Becket's Mother, Legendary tale of, 283 

Beckford, Lord Mayor, his Monumental 

Speech, 196 
Bedstead of Richard III., reputed, 133 
Belisarius, fortunes of, 62 
Bishops of London, pedigree of, 39 
Blanchard, Laman, error respecting, 68 
Blanco du Garay, and the Steam-engine, 

Bomba, King, origin of, 257 

Bodies, Exhumation of, 288 

Books, Popular, False Estimates of, 329 

Books, Worthless and Despised, 332 

Borough of Old Sarum, 340 

Boston Tea-party, the, 197 

Both sides of" the Question, 185 

Brazen Bull of Phalaris, 301 

Brewster, Sir David, on the Life and Works 
of Newton, 315 

Bribing Members of Parliament, 249 

Britain, English Conquest of, 69 

Britain, Praehistoric Kings of, 82 

Britain, why called Albion, 69 

British People and Carthaginians com- 
pared, 45 

Britons in the time of Caesar, 83 

Browne, Sir Thomas, on the " Incredibilia 
of the Ancients," 41 

Bucephalus, Alexander's Horse, 21 

Buckle's History of Civilization in Eng- 
land, quoted, 38, 40, 86, 342 

Buildings, Vast, erected by Slavery, 325 

Bulwer, Sir H., his account of the Due 
d'Enghien's Execution, 232 

Bulwer, Sir Henry, his Historic Charac- 
ters, 216, 232 

Buncombe, what is it? 341 

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, critical es- 
timate of, 330 

Burial-place of Harold, 87 

Burning Alive, error respecting, 336 

Burning of Vedas Widows, 300 

p^ESAR'S Conquest of Gaul, 32 

^ Caesar, Julius, Life of, by Napoleon 

III., 32 
Calves' Head Club, History of the, 169 



GENERAL INDEX. 



345 



Cannibalism in Europe, 84 

Cannon, Were they used at Crecy? 113 

Caroline, Queen of George IV., 211 

Carthage, Founding of, 44 

Casting Votes, memorable, 66 

Cato, Character of, by Mommsen, 31 

"Caucus," the term, origin of, 259 

Causes, Little, and Great Effects, 4 

Celts and Irish compared, 81 

Celtic Population of Britain, 81 

Cervantes, Birthday of, 333 

Cervantes, Sketch of, 

Characters of Kings, 2 

Character of a Trimmer, 255 

Chariemagne and his monogram, 9 

Charles I., Last Words of, 168 

Charles I., Martyrdom of, 167 

Charles I. and his Parliament, 166 

Charles II. in Adversity and Prosperity, 171 

Charles II. and Sir R. Willis's Plot, 172 

Charles II., Was he poisoned? 175 

Charles V. and his liar, History, 10 

Charles VI. of France, Tragic Tales of, 212 

Charlotte Corday, Execution of, 231 

Charters, signed with the Cross, 9 > 

Charters, Spurious, on, 277 

Chasles Forgeries about Newton, 316 

Chances of History, 1 

Chelsea Hospital, Who built it? 174 

Chesterfield's Letters, on, by Malone, 331 

Chevy Chase or Otterbourne? 119 

Christianity, Muscular, by Prof. Kingsley, 
2 93 

Church of England, the Historic, 298 

Cicero, Middleton's Life of, 32 

Clarence, Duke of, was he drowned in 
Malmsey? 134 

Cobbett, Characteristics of, 215 

Cobbett's Political Nicknames, 263 

Colossal Ants producing Gold, 19 * 

Colossus of Rhodes, the, 54 

Columbus and the Egg, anecdote of, 50 

Columbus and the "Ifs" of History, 5 

Commons House of Parliament, origin of, 
105 

Corrupt History of the Middle Ages, 38, 40 

Corsica, Theodore, ex-king of, 189 

Credulity of Great Minds, 289 

Crete, Labyrinth of, 53 

Cross, Legend of the, 60 

Cross Readings in Newspapers, origin 
of, 262 

Cross, signature of the, 9 

Crown, Supposed Prerogative of, 250 

Cruelties of Hanno and the Carthaginians, 
36 

Crusades and Chivalry, on, 101 

T^ARNLEY, Murder of, in T567, 153 
LJ Death of ^Eschylus, 20 
Deaths, Royal, Mysterious, 158 
De Caus and the Steam-engine, 312 
D'Enghien, Due, Execution of, 232 
De Morgan, Professor, on Diogenes, 24 
De Morgan, Professor, on Newton's Apple 

Tree, 315 
Demosthenes, how hebecame an Orator, 16 * 
Denmark, Absolute Monarchy of, 266 
Deucalional Deluge, Grote on the, 14 



Dido, Story of, 45, 335 

Diogenes, his Sayings and Doings, 22 » 

Dispersion of Ancient Manuscripts 71 

Domesday Book and its Partialities', 70 

Don Quixote and the Inquisition, 278 

Dragon of St. George, legend of the, 46 47 

Dragons and Dragon-slayers, 47 

Druidical Circles, on, 306 

Du Haillan, the French Historian, auda^ 

city of, 218 
Dunstan, St., and the Goldsmiths' Com- 
pany, 48 
Dunstan, St., and his Miracles, 47 

FDWARD II. and Berkeley Castle n 2 
Egypt, its Monuments and History, 14 
Elizabeth and Charles I., Ages of, 160 
Elizabeth, Queen, French Portrait of 150 
Elizabeth, Queen, Scandal against, 151 
Elizabeth, Queen, and Mary Queen of 

Scots, 153 
Engineering Miscalculation, 320 
England, the Historic Church of, 298 
England, Maritime Supremacy of, 252 
England, the Queens of, 75 
English Rebellion, Leaders of the 342 
Englishman's Knowledge of his Country's 

History, 78 
Eustache de St. Pierre, and the Burgesses 

of Calais, 115 
Execution of Charlotte Corday, 231 
Execution of Deacon Brodie, 302 
Execution of the Due d'Enghien" 232 
Execution of Louis XVI., 231 

■CABULOUS Loealities of Classic His- 

■*• _ tory, by Grote, 18 

Fair Rosamond, Story of, 95 

Fashions in Dress, 325 

Fictions, Popular, Common Origin of <u 

First-born of Henry VIII. and Queen 

Kathenne, 145 
Fleet-street, Historic House in, 160 
Following and Leading, Political, 261 
Foreigners, Naturalized, what the English 

owe to them, 318 
Forgery, Ingenious, by Simonides, 338 
Founding of Carthage, Legend of, 44 
France, Throne of, Succession to, 242 
Free-speaking, Archbishop Whately on 2 e z 
French Colours taken at Waterloo, 208 
French History, how it is written, '219 
French Revolution, incidents of, 304 
French Revolution, Sir A. Alison on 230 
French, Vanity of the, 218 ' 

Friar Bacon's Brazen Head, 49 
Froissart, Chronicles of, 217 

G A E S t l R ; 4 f SHOP ' and,heUdy 

Garter, Conferring the Order of, 202 
Geese, how the, saved the capitol of Rome 

^ 2 9 . . 

Geese, varieties of, 30 

Geology and History, Von Cotta on, 307 

George II., was he at the battle of Dettin- 

gen, 188 
George III. and American Independence 

200 ' 



346 



GENERAL INDEX. 



George III., different estimates of, 199 
George III., what drove him Mad, 205 
George IV. and his Queen, 211 
George, St.. and the Dragon, 45 
Gil Bias and Telemaque, Kingsley on, 329, 

33° 

Gildas, Who was he? 73 
Glastonbury, St. Dunstan at, 47 
Godstow and Rosamond's Bower, 96, 97 
Gower, the poet, and the Sutherland 

Family, 122 
Great Men, their share in History, 10 
Grand Monarque, Louis XIV., estimates 

of, 224, 226 
Great Rulers in History, Macaulay on, 1 
Great Events from Little Causes, 61 — 68 
Greece invaded by Xerxes, 26 
Greek Art, Falkener on, 319 
Greek, a new Language, 19 
Greeks, the Modern, 270 
Guillotin, history of the, 303 

HABEAS Corpus Act, how obtained, '258 
Haman and Mordecai, fortunes of, 301 
Hannibal's Vinegar Passage through the 

Alps, 37 
Hanno and the Carthaginians, Cruelties 

of, 36 
Harold, Burial-place of, disputed, 87 
Henrietta Maria, and her reputed penance 

to Tyburn, 161 
Henry IV. and the Jerusalem Chamber, 124 
Henry VIII., Reign of, by Froude, 139 
Heraldry, Worth of, 10 
Herodotus, various abuse of, 23 
Herodotus, the Father of History, 22 
History. Chances of, 1 _ 
History, Great Rulers in, by Macaulay, 1 
History, Modern, difficulty of writing, 6 
Historical Authorities, Worth of, 7 
Historical Lore in the French Senate, 242 
Hobbes, Hostility to his writings, 285 
Homer's Battles, and his imitators, 17 
Homeric Poems, Froude on the, 16 
Homeric Theories, review of, 17 
Hook, Dean, his account of Thomas a. 

Becket, 281 
Hopkins, the Witchfinder, his fate, 302 _ 
Houbraken's Heads, authenticity of, im- 
pugned, 324 
Hume's History of England, worth of, 7 

'FS," absurdity of a series, in History, 6 
Ifs" of History, the, 3 — 7 
Improvers of Mankind, who are they? 308 
Incredibilia of the Ancients, by Palsepha- 

tus, 41 
Ingulph of Croyland and William of 

Malmesbury, 74 
Inquisition, views on the, 278 
Invasion, Panics of, 1847-8, and 185 1, 267 
Inventions, the Last Half-Century of, 327 
Iron Cages, and Bishop of Verdun, 301 
Iron Shroud, tale of the, 301 
Isle of Wight, King of the, 125 

JACK and the Bean-Stalk, Story of, 57 
Jack Cade, Who was he? 124 
Jack the Giant-killer, Story of, 55 



r 



Jane Shore, Story of, 126 

Jeffreys, Judge, defence of, 181 

Joan of Arc, was she burnt as a Witch, 220 

John, King, vindicated, 101 

John of Leyden, Story of, 286 

July, the great political month of, 245 

KATHERINE, QUEEN, and Henry 
VIII., first-born of, 145 

Katherine's, St., Hospital and Queen Char- 
lotte, 193 

Kings, Characters of, 2 

Kings and Pretenders, their fortunes, on, 
178 

Kings, Two Tippling, 157 

Kingston, SirW., his jocular cruelty, 137 

Knight Templars, Treatment of, 93 

T ABYRINTH of Crete described, the, 53 
- L ' La Cloche, Son of Charles II., 173 
Landor's Epigram on George III., 200 
Lardner, Dr., on Worcester's Steam-en- 
gine, 314 
Lateran, origin of the, 298 
Leaders of the English Rebellion, 342 
Legend of the Cross, 60 
Legitimacy and Government, 261 
Lighting, Inventions in, 327 
Lion King, Story of the, 99 
Locomotion, improvements in, 328 
Locomotive, Invention of the, 320 
Louis XL, of France, Cruelties of, 223 
Louis XIV., of France, real Character 

of, 224 
Louis XIV. and Napoleon, a parallel, 235 
Louis XVI., Execution of, 231 
Louis XV 1 1 1., the Reign of, 243 
Luke, St., not a Painter, 49 
Luke St. , Picture attributed to, 49 
Luther, Fables about, 296 
Luther and Transubstantiation, 295 

A/JACAULAY'S Character of a Nabob, 

Macaulay's estimate of Horace Walpole, 

33«> 
Macaulay on Great Rulers in History, 1 
Magna Charta, outline of, 104 
Maiden, the, and Halifax Gibbet, 302, 303 
Majorities, small, 358 
Man upon the Earth, 306 
Manners ? History of, 324 
Manuscripts, Ancient, Dispersion of, 71 
Marlborough, Duke of, his Avarice, 185 
Marlborough, Duke of, his Victories, 185 
Marlborough, Sarah, Duchess of, her Ec- 
centricities, 186 
Mary, Queen, Character of, 148 
Mary, Queen of Scots, her chances, 6 
Mary, Queen of Scots, Character of, 154 
Mary and Elizabeth, and the Reforma- 
tion, 6 
Mayfield and St. Dunstan's relics, 48 
" Measures, not Men," political, 261 
Melbourne, Viscount, the Minister, 213 
Methodism, origin of, 67 
Methodism, Relics of its Founders, 289 
Middle Ages, Corrupt History of, 38 — 40 






GENERAL INDEX. 



347 



Middle Ages, Fighting Abbots and Pre- 
lates in, 279 
Middleton's Life of Cicero, 32 
Milton, Popularity of, estimated, 329 
Misrepresentations, Historic, 74 
Mogul, the Great, Portrait of, 336 
Mohammed, Portrait of, 297 
Money cost of War, estimated, 265 
Monk, General, his Marriage, 173 
Moral of Monarchy, by Jeremy Taylor, 3 
More, Sir Thomas, and the Butlership of 

Lincoln's-inn, 137 
Morganatic Marriages, on, 273 
Mythology, Modern, 333 

TNJABOB, Character of the, 274 

-^ Napoleon I., Cost of his Wars, 240 

Napoleon 1. and Louis XIV., a parallel, 

235 
Napoleon I. at St. Helena, 304 
Napoleon I., character of, 237 
Napoleon I., short-sightedness of, 236 
Napoleon I., his Star of Destiny, 235 
Napoleon I., Thiers on, 238 
National Debt, on the, 247 
Naval Fights, fortunes of, 61 
Nell Gwyn, her several Houses, 175 
Nelson, Lord, Character of, by Lord Hol- 
land, 200 
Newcastle, Duke of, his vagaries, 188 
New Forest, and the Death of William 

Rufus, 61 
Newton, Sir Isaac, his Apple-tree, 315 
Newton, fallacies, frauds, and forgeries, 

respecting, 315,317 
Newton's Priuciftia characterized, 317 
Nicknames, Political, by Cobbett, 216 
Nicknames, Political, 263 
Nine Worthies, the, 53 
Norman Kings, Character of, 94 
Northumberland, Earls and Dukes of, 121 

/"\AK, Wearing on the 29th of May, 172 
^ O'Connell, Daniel, Memory of, 276 
Oratory, Ancient and Modern, estimated, 8 
Order of the Garter, conferring, 347 
Order of the Garter, Origin of, 114 
Orleans Family, the, 244 
Orleans, the Maid of, 221 
Owen, Prof., on the Saving of the Capitol 
of Rome, 29 

pALMERSTON, VISCOUNT, Ances- 
-*- try of, 214 

Pantheism, What is it ? 292 

Paper-mill, the first in England, 135 

Parr, Lady Katherine, and Burning for 

Heresy, 147 
Panics, Invasion, of 1847-8, and 1851, 267 
Pauses, questionable consequences of, 6 
Paris, city, origin of, 39 
Partington, Mrs., and her Mop, 256 
Pascal and Newton question, 316 
Pepys, the Diarist, his mistakes about 

Shakspeare and Butler, 329 
Personal Motives and Pretended Patrio- 
tism, 79 
Philosophers, Old, Horace Walpole on, 314 
Phrases, Historical, by Herr Biichmann,339 



Pigeons, Keeping, in France, 228 
Pitt and the Pittites, 204 
Pitt as a War Minister, 203 
Plato sold as a Slave, 15 
Poisoner, Pope Alexander VI., 302 
Poisoner, Saint-Croix, 301 
Political Hate, a page of, 201 
Pope's Toe, origin of Kissing, 298 
Potwallopers, origin of, 255 
Prehistoric Archaeology, on, 305 
Prerogative of the Crown supposed, 250 
Prince of Wales's Feathers, origin of, no 
Prince of Wales, the First, where born, in 
Prophesies and Guesses, remarkable, 254 
Prophecy-ridden Princes, 294 
Puritans, Who were they? 285 
Pythagoras, and the Transmigration of 
Souls, 290 

QUEENS of England, the, 75 

TD ALEIGH, Sir Walter, on the Scaffold, 
V i57 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, in the Tower, 156 
Rape of the Bucket, Origin of, 65 
Rebellion, English, Leaders of the, 42 
Reformation, Progress of the, 295 
Relics, imaginary worth of, 288 
Retributive Justice, Instances of, 301 304 
Revolutions, a Sufferer by, 262 
Richard Cceur de Lion, Death of, 130 
Richard III., autograph of, scarce, 130 
Richard III., his Bedstead at Leicester, 132 
Richard III., errors respecting, 80 
Richard III., Sir T. More's account of, 130 
Richard III., Walpole : s Historic Doubts 

on, 129 
Richelieu, Cardinal, Character of, 227 
Roasting an Abbot, 138 
Robin Hood, Who was he? 106 
Rodney, Lord, in difficulties, 201 
Rome, Early History of, 27 
Rome, how the Capitol was saved, 28 
Rome, the Mistress of the World, 30 
Rome under the Oligarchy, by Mommsen, 
_ 34 . 

Roman Empire, the, 31 
Round Table and the Two Arthurs, 84 
Round Towers of Ireland, Dr Petrieon, 325 
Royalty deduced from a Tub- woman, 170 
Russia, French Invasion of, 240 

" C ADDLE Letter" and Charles I., 165 

St. Christopher, Legend of, 334 
Scandal against Queen Elizabeth, 151 
Science and Superstition, Prof. Kingsley 

on, 309 
Scots Greys at Waterloo, 209 
Seeking a place, 269 
Semiramis, the Assyrian Queen, 61 
Shakspeare and Cervantes, Birthday of, 333 
Shakspeare and his Commentators, 331 
Ship-money, amount of, 66 
Shoreditch, ancient account of, 128 
Shovel, Sir Cloude.sley, fate of, 182 
Siege of Troy, account of the, 26 
" Sights that I have seen," byDutens, 271 
Soliman the Second, his butcheries, 27 



348 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Somerset, the Proud, 124 
Stage, Writing History for, n 
Statistics, Fallacies of, 326 
Steam-engine, who invented it? 311 
Steam-ship, "Great Eastern," and the Ark, 

321 
" Stone Age, the," explained, 308 
Story of an Arundel Marble, 324 
Story of Fair Rosamond, 94 
Story of Jack and the Beanstalk, 57 
Story of Jack the Giant-Killer, 55 
Story of Jane Shore, 126 
Story of John of Leyden, 286 
Story of Katherine of Arragon, and her 

two Marriages, 144 
Story of the Lion King, 99 
Story of Tom Hickathrift, 58 
Story of Tom Thumb, 58 
Story of the Wandering Jew, 42 
Story of the " Vengeur du Peuple," 229 
Stuart, House of, English Adherents of, 177 
Stuart, House of, its Strange Fortunes, 

176 
Supremacy of the Sea, Froude on, 252 

•"pALLEYRAND, Secret of his Success, 

Tea-drinking in Russia, 327 

Tell, William, a Fable, 51 

Tenures and Traditions, Ancient, 77 

Theodore, ex-king of Corsica, Insolvent, 
189 

Thiers, M., his Historical misrepresenta- 
tions, 208 

Tom Hickathrift, Story of, 58 

Tom Thumb, Story of, 58 

Tooke, Home, his Political Prediction, 194 

Tournament of the Field of the Cloth of 
Gold, 140 

Tradition, Local, decay of, 77 

Transmigration of Souls, Doctrine of, 290 

Travels of Anacharsis, 12 

Trevor, Canon, on Egypt and its Wonders, 

14 

Trimmer, Character of a, 255 

Tristram Shandy, Horace Walpole on, 330 

Troy, the Siege of, History of, 26 

Truth, Historic Test of, 76 

Tub Story of Diogenes, demolished, 24 

Tulipomania, the, hoaxes of, 52 

Tyburn, reputed royal Penance to, 161 

VALENTIN IAN and the Ring, 62 

" Vengeur du Peuple," Story of, 229 
Vedas Widows, Burning of, a mistake, 300 
Versailles Palace, Money cost of, 225 



Vizier, imprisoned, escape of, 67 
Voltaire's Universal History, 13 

TJTRECHT, Treaty, Signing of, 257 

TX7ALPOLE, Horace, his account of 
v v Lord Mayor Beckford, 196 
Walpole, Horace, on the Characters of 

Kings, 2 
Walpole, Horace, his Historic Doubts on 

Richard III., 128, 30 
Walpole, Horace, on the Travels of 

Anacharsis, 12 
Walpole, Sir Robert, and "All Men have 

their Price," 248 
Wandering Jew, Story of the, 42 
Wandering Jew in London, 43 
Wapshotts of Chertsey, and their holding, 

the, 93 
War, Money cost of, 264 
Wars, odd causes of some, 63, 64 
Wars of the Roses, 122 
Washington, popular error respecting, 68 
Waste of Life, 264 
Water, Composition of, who discovered it ? 

310 
Waterloo, Defeat of the Imperial Guard 

at, 246 
Waterloo, French Colours taken at, 208 
Watt and Cavendish, and the Composition 

of Water, 310 
What is Buncombe? 341 
Whitehead, the Poet Laureate, 198 
Whitewashing Reputations, 80 
William the Conqueror and the Nevr 

Forest, 90 
William Rufus, death of, 91 
William Tell, a Fable, 51 
Wilkes triumphant, 198 
Wilson, Sir Robert, as a politician, 213 
Window, the cause of a War, 64 
Wolfe, General, and the Expedition to 

Quebec, 192 
Wolsey, Cardinal, not a Butcher's Son, 142 
Wolsey, Cardinal, his Rise and Fall, 143 
Worcester, Marquis of, and the Steam- 
engine, 313 
Worth of Antiquarianism, 8 
Worth of Heraldry, 10 
Worthies, the Nine, who were they ? 53 
Writing History, various modes of, 10 
Writing History for the Stage, 11 
Wyat, Sir Thomas, his Breakdown, 147 

■y-ERXES, his Exploits and his End, 26 



THE END. 



N 



By the Author of the present Work. 

OTABLE THINGS OF OUR OWN TIME: a Supplementary Volume 
of "Things not Generally Known." With Frontispiece and Vignette. 3s, 6d. 



itfllaljLe Clings 



u lou have not posted your booh these ten years ; how should a man keep 
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Now ready, with Frontispiece and Vignette, 3s. 6d. 

NOTABLE THINGS OF 
OUR OWN TIME; 

A Supplementary Volume of " Things not Generally Known 
Familiarly Explained." 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 

JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A. 

AUTHOR OF "CURIOSITIES OF LONDON," ETC. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

A writer of strong common sense has declared the spirit of the time to 
require in every man not only a thorough knowledge of his own profession, 
but much general knowledge to enable him to keep pace with the rapid 
changes which are taking place around him. The truth of this remark was 
self-evident at the time it was made ; and every subsequent year has added to 
its corroboration, but with this change in opinion, that to know one thing well, 
a man must know a little of all things ; if we make good use of our lifetime, 
there is room enough to crowd almost every art and science into it. 
Dr. Arnold has emphatically said: (i Depend upon it a mixed know- 
ledge is not a superficial one : as far as it goes, the views that it gives are 

true." 

[over. 



NOTABLE THINGS OF OUR OWN TIME.— CONTENTS. 



Inventions anticipated — Spectrum 
Analysis — Antiquity of the Stereoscope 
— Photography applied to Astronomy 

— Revelations of the Microscope — 
— Adulteration of Food — Spectrum 
Microscope — Spontaneous Combustion 
— Leibig's Extract of Meat — Electric 
Lamp and Coal-gas — Oils and Paraffin 
— Drummond Light in Lighthouses — 
Lime and Magnesium Lights — Fuel 
from Water — Fire from Wood — Manu- 
facture of Lucifer Matches — Warming 
St. Paul's Cathedral — How the Palace 
of Parliament is Ventilated — Nitro- 
glycerine, new substitute for Gunpowder 

— Building Blackfriars Bridge — Me- 
tropolitan Main Drainage — Bank-note 
Library — Wonders of the Cotton Manu- 
facture — Story of the Sewing-Machine 
— India Rubber Manufacture. 

Mining and Working in Metals: — 
Recent Results of Mining — How to 
make Gold — Nicety of Machine-measur- 
ing — Air-hammers and Steam-ham- 
mers — Nasmyth, the Engineer — Cal- 
culation of Life by Machinery. 

rHE Railway: — A Railway Journey 
Round the World— Building the Vic- 
toria Railway Bridge, Canada — Pneu- 
matic and Subterranean Railways — 
Results of Railways. 

rHE Electric Telegraph: — Magne- 
tism and Electricity — Suspended 
between Heaven and Earth — Magnetic 
Mountain — Powerful Electro-magnetic 
Apparatus — The Electric Telegraph 
Data — "The Nerves of London" — 
Curiosities of Sound — Exhibition of 
Wilde's Electro-magnetic Light, at 
Burlington House — Sir Charles Wheat- 
stone — Visible Speech. 

Operations of War: — Cnil Engineer- 
ing in Warfare — Enfield Rifles — 
Armour-plates and Great Guns — 
Armstroig and Whitworth — Naval 



Construction — Railways in Warfare — 
Story of the Needle-Gun — Iron Ships 
— " Great Eastern " Steam-ship — De- 
structive Conflict of Ironclads — Siege of 
Sebastopol — New Weapons at the 
French Exhibition. 

Diamonds : — Diamond Cutting and 
Polishing — Koh-i-noor and Sancy 
Diamonds — "Regent of France" — 
Origin of Diamonds — Present Value of 
Diamonds — British Pearls. 

Life, Health, and Death : — Brain of 
Man — How the Bedstead should be 
placed — Deaths by Lightning — Remedy 
for Poisoning — Alleged Influence of the 
Moon on the Insane — The Hour of Death 
— Death not Pain — Progress of Medicine 
— Medical Errors — New British Phar- 
macopoeia — Chloroform, its History — 
What is Pepsine ? — The Hammam, or 
Hot-air Bath — Faraday's Loss of Me- 
mory — Burial on the North Side — 
Beauty of Death. 

Historic Jottings : — Columbus and 
the Egg — Chauvinisme — Black Mon- 
day — Luck of Crooked Money — Decem- 
ber and the Napoleon Family — Results 
of War — Modern Battles — United Ger- 
many — England the Refuge of the 
World — Crises of History — The Pro- 
testant Church — The word "Altar" 
— Jewish and Christian Holidays — 
Marriages by Special Licence — Wars — 
Avebury a Burial-Circle? — Prse-historic 
Times. 

Great Exhibition: — Origin of the 
Great Exhibition of 1851 : Facts never 
yet published — The Alexandra Palace. 

Miscellaneous: — Gold Discoveries — 
Foreign Exchanges — Decimal and 
Metric System — Ascent of Mont Blanc 
— Prevention of Crime : Employment 
of the Destitute Poor — Tea-drinking in 
Russia — Restlessness and Enterprise. 



LONDON: LOCKWOOD AND CO., 

stationers' hall court. 



b Z8 






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